toured the complex. Medical isotope project With the NRU reactor at the Chalk River Laboratories due to close in 2016, there was a need to find alternative sources of the medical isotope technetium-99m, a mainstay of nuclear medicine. In 2011 the Canadian Light Source received $14 Million in funding to investigate the feasibility of using an electron LINAC to produce molybdenum-99, the parent isotope of technetium-99. As part of this project a 35MeV LINAC has been installed in an unused underground experimental hall previously used for photonuclear experiments with the SAL LINAC. First irradiations are planned for late summer 2012, with the results to be evaluated by the Winnipeg Health Sciences Centre. Education program The CLS has an education program – "Students on the Beamlines" – funded by NSERC Promoscience. This outreach program for science allows high school students to fully experience the work of a scientist, in addition to having the chance to use the CLS beamlines. "The program allows students the development of active research, a very rare phenomena in schools and provides direct access to the use of a particle accelerator, something even rarer!" said teacher Steve Desfosses form College Saint-Bernard, Drummondville, Quebec. Dene students from La Loche, Saskatchewan have taken part in this program twice, looking at effects of acid rain. Student Jontae DesRoches commented "Elders have noticed that the landscape, where trees used to grow, there's none growing anymore. They're pretty concerned because wildlife is disappearing. Like, here there used to be rabbits and now there's none". In May 2012 three student groups were at the CLS simultaneously, with the La Loche students as the first to use the IDEAS beamline. "The aim for the students," according to CLS education and outreach coordinator Tracy Walker, "is to get an authentic scientific inquiry that's different from the examples in textbooks that have been done thousands of times." Students from six provinces as well as the Northwest Territories have been directly involved in experiments, some of which have yielded publishable-quality research. In 2012 the CLS was awarded the Canadian Nuclear Society's Education and Communication Award "in recognition of its commitment to community outreach, increasing public awareness of synchrotron science, and developing innovative and outstanding secondary educational programs such as Students on the Beamlines". Technical description Accelerators Injection system The injection system consists of a 250 MeV LINAC, a low energy transfer line, a 2.9 GeV booster synchrotron