SNOLAB is located in the Creighton Nickel Mine, an active mine site. Assuming OP was making a Letterkenny reference, it's actually right next to the Leclaire arena where the Ag Hall scenes were filmed.

The principle behind applying this research towards homeland security is well-known, and the DoD actually have backed a neutrino detector dedicated to non-proliferation and monitoring called "Watchman".

Interestingly, OP is correct in that the American has no interest or influence on the experiment in the article. In fact, the SNO+ experiment (backed primarily by Canada and the UK) is actively competing with other upcoming American-led experiments backed by the DOE and DOD.

There's going to be a lot of new SNO+ results published in the coming few years. Coupled with an increasing interest in adapting particle physics towards multidisciplinary applications, I sure hope it's not the last time we'll see SNOLAB on this sub!