OTTAWA — Canada’s summer shortage of medical isotopes will worsen dramatically this fall and winter after officials confirmed the Chalk River nuclear reactor won’t return to service before late 2009.
“It was a catastrophe in May; now it’s turning into a national and international disaster,” said Dr. Jean-Luc Urbain, president of the Canadian Association of Nuclear Medicine “The supply is very erratic — patchy and erratic.”
Urbain and other nuclear medicine specialists were dismayed but not surprised when the president of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. said Wednesday the reactor won’t be working before the end of the year at the earliest. Sun Media reported this in May.
Hugh MacDiarmid said not only will the NRU reactor remain offline for an additional six months, AECL still doesn’t know how to make the repairs.
The extended shutdown of the world’s largest medical isotope-producing reactor sets the stage for a global medical crisis by early 2010.
In the fall, with doctors and patients back from summer vacations, demand on the health system will swell. But the supply of technetium-99m, the diagnostic isotope used for cancer and cardiac tests, won’t grow. The situation will be “very bleak,” Urbain said.
“We’re teetering on the edge but still remaining upright,” said Dr. Chris O’Brien of the Ontario Association of Nuclear Medicine. By early 2010, however, the situation could be “very concerning.”
The Petten HFR reactor in The Netherlands, the world’s other big global supplier, is to shut for six months of maintenance in early 2010. If the NRU is not running by then, the global supply of medical isotopes will dwindle by 60% to 70%. MacDiarmid hinted that Chalk River could be down even longer than year-end.
Until Wednesday, AECL would only say repairs would take at least three months.
Across Canada, isotope capacity now ranges from 50% to 90% of normal levels. To make best use of the shrinking and unpredictable supply each week, patient appointments have been altered, and in some cases less desirable isotopes have been used.
For example, Dr. Karen Gulenshyn, chief of nuclear medicine for Hamilton Health Sciences and St. Joseph’s Healthcare, said Hamilton was coping with about 70 to 80% of its usual isotope capacity Wednesday, but expected to have only 10 to 20% on Friday.
Doctors and opposition politicians urged the federal government to immediately start co-ordinating cross-Canada access to PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scans, which don’t use technetium, and to start buying new PET scanners. They also want the federal government to revisit the mothballed Maple I and II reactors, which some say could produce the needed isotopes.
In a written statement, Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq and Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt said “careful management of available supplies by the health care community and the successful identification of alternatives will remain essential.”
Dr. Sandy McEwan, chair of oncology at the University of Alberta, who was recently appointed Aglukkaq’s special advisor on medical isotopes, declined comment yesterday.
christina.spencer@sunmedia.ca
