Canada to pull out of reactor research, medical isotope business

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has announced that Canada will get out of the medical isotope business when Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. ‘s 52-year-old National Research Universal reactor at AECL’s Chalk River laboratories is closed sometime around 2016.

The NRU is Canada’s only research reactor and produces 33% of the international supply of medical isotopes and acts as a neutron-beam research hub—more than 400 scientists makes use of the facility.

The loss of the medical isotopes in particular, is causing controversy .

Two replacement reactors for producing isotopes called MAPLES were canceled last year after the project went over budget and failed to pass design inspections.

The age of NRU has meant the facility has frequently broken down , which is why AECL had proposed building a replacement. That has now been stopped too. “I don’t think anyone is looking at giving a couple of billion dollars more to AECL at this point for a new project,” said Kory Teneycke, Harper’s communication director in a press conference.

This is a “horribly short-sighted” decision says Dominic Ryan of McGill University’s Centre for the Physics of Materials in an interview with The Canadian Press . Ryan argues that reducing an investment in Canada’s nuclear program will limit opportunities to get involved in the nuclear boom.

Paul Guinnessy