Energy

Tomorrow’s trucks, trains, ships, and airplanes could be powered with clean hydrogen technology that exists today—and discoveries made by Canadian physicists could help make this sustainable technology even safer and more efficient.

Dalhousie University engineers use neutron beams to develop inexpensive ways to process lightweight materials for actuators that fold airplane wings during flight—just one of many possible energy-saving aerospace and automotive applications for shape memory alloys.

After using neutron beams to better understand materials required for safer energy storage, University of Calgary chemists and their international collaborators were able to demonstrate a prototype battery that showed major improvements to performance.

New Brunswick Power accessed neutron beams to obtain critical knowledge to understand unexpected incidents at its nuclear power plant and assure its safe and reliable operations.

Stress data from an array of feeder pipes obtained with neutron beams assists NB Power to manage the cracking issues and informs decision-making about the timing of its refurbishment.

The Canadian nuclear industry rose to immediate challenges posed by the cracking issues, employing neutron beams as part of their research on materials. That research provided confidence to continue with a multi-billion export project, enabled all the stations to assure safety for continued, and resulted in spin-off technology.

Operators of nuclear power plants using Canadian technology joined together to study the cracking issues observed at Point Lepreau and later at Gentilly-2, and ultimately solved the underlying issue for all Canadian reactors.

Stress data obtained at the CNBC will be useful to the industry in making hundred thousand-dollar decisions about how to manage pipelines that have sustained mechanical damage, for example, as a result of a backhoe digging in the wrong place.

Researchers from Western University accessed the CNBC to generate knowledge for safe storage of nuclear waste.

One University of Calgary geoscientist is demonstrating how to use neutron beams to determine the manner in which the pores in shale deposits store oil and gas—knowledge that could be used to select the best extraction method for maximizing oil and natural gas production, as well as to reduce emissions by helping researchers to better understand how excess carbon dioxide could be stored in shale.

Stress data from the CNBC are helping Schlumberger develop more reliable fluid ends. Replacing fluid ends is a multi-million dollar expense for the fracking industry.

The CNBC data provided strong evidence that the pipe was likely subjected to tension over time while in service, and that the fracture was not due to faulty pipe.