THUNDER BAY — A donation from the Nuclear Waste Management Organization will help Lakehead University scientists see certain things more clearly.
With a Keyence petrographic microscope and mineral element analyzer system in the Centennial Building, the university’s geology department can analyze unique properties in ores.
A petrographic microscope, or polarizing microscope, is a specialized device that uses polarized light to identify minerals. There are only two of these microscopes and analyzers in Canadian universities.
“I’m so excited to have this here hosted in my lab,” LU geology professor Shannon Zurevinski told Dougall Media on Tuesday.
“I’m a mineralogist, so there’s a million things I can do with these kinds of instruments. And the image analysis alone is going to be very important.
“Having the elemental analyzer allows me to get a really quick analysis of different minerals, and progress a project at a much faster rate than having to wait around and, you know, go to other universities and rent space in their labs and run my analysis there. So it kind of speeds up a lot of the process.
“But I think the most exciting thing for our department is the students who are going to be able to learn mineralogy using these kinds of technologies.
“Our undergraduate classes (and) our graduate students, they can all come in here and learn the capabilities of this and work on it for their own small research projects. So it’s a great addition to our department.”
The equipment improves LU geologists’ ability to conduct vital research about the unique geology of Northwestern Ontario, according to a news release from the NWMO.
The nuclear organization is bearing the full $200,000-plus cost of the new equipment.
“Investing in scientific infrastructure and fostering academic partnerships is paramount to Canada’s future,” NWMO geoscience director Andrew Parmenter is quoted as saying in a news release.
“This grant to Lakehead University supports the critical research necessary for our long-term environmental needs and actively contributes to training the next generation of geoscientists.”
NWMO geoscience research manager Alexander Blyth said the Keyence microscope allows researchers such as Zurevinski “to take absolutely fantastic, publication-grade imagery.”
The equipment will allow scientists to do more research work locally “rather than having to go out,” he told Dougall Media.
In the past, Blyth said, Zurevinski “had to travel to other universities to access this type of equipment or other equipment that can do similar work.”
He said the equipment has “a lot of industry applications” in “things like lithium exploration.”
Funded by Canada’s nuclear power producers, the NWMO is the proponent of a deep-underground nuclear waste repository being proposed for a site south of Highway 17 between Ignace and Dryden.
An impact assessment for the multibillion-dollar project was launched on Jan. 5 and is expected to take more than four years to complete.
Construction of the deep geological repository, if it clears all regulatory and licensing hurdles, could begin in the early 2030s and take about 10 years to complete.
The facility would have an operating life of about 150 years, NWMO regional spokesperson Vince Ponka said.
