The heavy-water-moderated NRX (National Research Experimental) nuclear reactor—the forerunner of the CANDU nuclear reactor—at Chalk River, Ontario. LAC e010956335.
The NRX became operational at the Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario in July of 1947. Its design emerged from the National Research Council’s Montreal Laboratory, housed initially at McGill University in 1942 and then at the University of Montreal, 1943-1944. The NRX’s plutonium-producing design was adopted by the United States for its production plants on the Savannah River that produced the plutonium for the American atom bomb arsenal.