Scientists and government officials broke ground this morning on a $62.9 million particle accelerator that will help physicists probe the mysteries of the universe and provide rare isotopes for nuclear medicine.
The ARIEL (advanced rare isotope laboratory) is being built at the TRIUMF subatomics physics lab on the campus of the University of British Columbia. TRIUMF is owned and operated as a joint venture by a consortium of universities.
The ARIEL project – which is being funded by the federal and B.C. governments and partners in India and the U.S. – will take 18 months to complete. Several local firms are involved in the project, including Chernoff Thompson Architects, Thurber Engineering, Scott Construction Group and Pavac Industries. The project will employee 300 people during the construction phase and create 160 permanent jobs.
Pavac, which is based in Richmond, is providing superconducting radio frequency components that will be used to in an e-linac underground accelerator that will whip electrons to the speed of light. When they slam into certain elements, they create radioactive isotopes, which are used in nuclear medicine.
Pavac president Ralf Edinger said the contract is worth $700,000 to his company.
“This is really good for us because we can really demonstrate our capabilities,” said Edinger, who added his company is already getting spinoff contracts as a result of working on the ARIEL project.
Canada is facing a shortage of radioactive isotopes due to a series of shutdowns at the Chalk River nuclear power plant, which has produced much of Canada’s medical isotopes.
About half of the isotopes produced in the ARIEL will be used for medicine. The rest will be used for pure research purposes.
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