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OTTAWA — Canada’s top doctor of nuclear medicine has slammed the Expert Review Panel on Medical Isotope Production for wasting months to deliver a near useless report on how to replace the broken nuclear reactor at Chalk River.
The panel was created in the spring by Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt to find alternative supplies of medical isotopes used in cancer and heart scans, after the NRU reactor went down for extended repairs.
“The report is comprehensive but doesn’t bring anything new to the table. Everything we knew already,” said Jean-Luc Urbain, president of the Canadian Society of Nuclear Medicine.
The key recommendation was to build a new reactor for between $500 million and $1.2 billion. The report all but dismissed the prospect of revisiting the Maple I and II reactors, which were supposed to replace the NRU reactor but ran $700 million over budget before being abandoned.
“It’s more than disturbing to see that one of the recommendations is to spend another $500 million, but not spend $100,000 to $200,000 to convene a panel of international experts to look at the viability of the Maples,” Urbain said.
Another option recommended by the panel was to look into technology for cyclotrons — a type of particle accelerator — despite it still being in the development stage.
Urbain described this option as “absolute nonsense” and said: “The Europeans have done ten 10 years of research on the cyclotron and have clearly demonstrated that it’s non-viable.”
Dr. Christopher O’Brien, president of the Ontario Association of Nuclear Medicine, also said the Maple reactors should be looked at again, and if they couldn’t be made to work a new reactor might be the best option.
peter.zimonjic@sunmedia.ca