Canada has a long and storied nuclear history. The area of Great Bear Lake has provided uranium for the Manhattan Project and the first Canadian nuclear reactor, the ZEEP, was built in 1945. Two years later, the National Research Council of Canada began operations on the NRX (National Research Experimental) heavy-water reactor at Chalk River Laboratories, near Ottawa. In 1957, it was followed by the National Research Universal Reactor (NRU).
