ABSTRACT
The USA and its allies were in the grip of the Second World War, and immediately following the successful operation of the Chicago pile the US government embarked on a large-scale high priority programme to build plutonium-producing reactors at the time of demonstration. The sense of urgency was reinforced by the knowledge that German laboratories had been trying to develop a nuclear weapon. Consequently, when the US Atomic Energy Commission (USAEC) came into being on 1947, as successor to the Corps of Engineers, it inherited a mixed assortment of low temperature reactors built for military purposes and not designed to produce electricity. After 1945, the Canadian nuclear programme lost its military urgency and in the USA the McMahon Act of 1946 restricted the international exchange of information, thus impelling the UK into an independent nuclear programme. Canada had to decide whether to stay in field or to turn away from commercial opportunities offered by several years of research and development.
