June 22, 2009
Panel named to find secure isotope supply
Panel named to find secure isotope supply
Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt named four members of an expert panel Friday, whom the federal government has asked to find a way for Canada to secure a stable, long-term supply of medical isotopes, used to help diagnose and treat more than two million patients a year.
The government also invited formal “expressions of interest” from potential isotope suppliers. The operators of research reactors and particle accelerator facilities at McMaster University in Hamilton and at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver are among a handful of Canadian organizations expected to signal their interest.
“While there are no quick or easy solutions to the isotopes shortage, this process will help us identify the very best prospects for future sources of supply,” Raitt said in a statement.
She has asked the panel to complete its final report by Nov. 30.
“I’m not sure how this is helping Canadians in need this summer and in the fall,” said NDP MP Nathan Cullen. “Striking a committee and producing a report is what Ottawa does when it doesn’t want to act.”
Patients with cancer, heart disease and other illnesses have had medical tests and treatments put off, delayed or cancelled because of a worldwide shortage of isotopes, caused when the Canadian NRU nuclear reactor that creates about 40 per cent of the world supply had to be shut down last month after it began leaking radioactive water.
Liberal MP Geoff Regan said he was happy the government appointed the panel.
“I would be happier — as would thousands of cancer and cardiac patients — if the government was also willing to admit their mistake in cancelling the MAPLE project a year ago,” Regan said.
The MAPLEs are a pair of reactors built next to the aging NRU reactor in Chalk River, Ont., that were to have been producing isotopes in 2000. The government shuttered the project last spring after Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. said it had no prospects of solving a technical problem the nuclear safety regulator insisted be resolved. On Thursday and last week, MPs heard testimony under oath at a parliamentary committee that, in early tests, one MAPLE was fired up and, even when operating at half its full power, produced enough isotopes to satisfy the entire Canadian demand for isotopes.
On Thursday, University of Waterloo engineering professor Jatin Nathwani urged the government to reactivate the MAPLE project, even as the expert panel started its deliberations.
“A parallel path followed with urgency can bring the already built MAPLE reactors to an operating state in perhaps the next six to 18 months,” Nathwani said.
“If Minister Raitt was concerned with the health and safety of millions of Canadians, she would embark on this parallel path today,” said Regan. “If her panel comes to the same conclusion on Nov. 30, 2009, as Dr. Nathwani and the other experts we heard from yesterday, we will have wasted five months and put the health of thousands in jeopardy.”
