The provincial government announced Dec. 17 that it would not go ahead with a large-scale nuclear reactor in the province due to uncertainty about costs. But, in the same announcement, Energy and Resources Minister Bill Boyd expressed continued support for other uranium projects in the province including mining and exploration, finding a repository site for nuclear waste, and development of a nuclear research reactor proposed to produce medical isotopes at the University of Saskatchewan.
Research reactor proposed
In May 2009 the National Research Universal (NRU) nuclear reactor in Chalk River, Ontario, was shut down due to a heavy water leak. This shutdown contributed to a global shortage of medical isotopes – the radioactive elements used to diagnose and treat cancer. Prior to the shutdown, the Chalk River reactor produced about 30 per cent of the world’s medical isotope supply.
To help solve the shortage, the federal government issued a call for proposals for projects to produce medical isotopes. The province of Saskatchewan answered the call and submitted a proposal to build a research reactor at the University of Saskatchewan that would produce medical isotopes and be used for nuclear research. The facility, called the Canadian Neutron Source, would cost $500-750 million to build and $45-70 million per year to operate.
To advise the federal government on the most viable options for securing a steady supply of medical isotopes, the Expert Review Panel on Medical Isotope Production was established in June 2009. The panel assessed several different technologies – both nuclear and non-nuclear – used in the production of medical isotopes. In a report released Dec. 3, 2009, the panel recommended that the federal government work quickly and aggressively to develop a new multi-purpose nuclear research reactor to replace the Chalk River reactor. The proposal submitted by the University of Saskatchewan is one of a handful of proposals that may be considered if the government follows the panel’s recommendation. At the time of writing, Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt has yet to comment on the report.
Alternatives to fission
Critics of Saskatchewan’s proposal point out that medical isotopes can be produced without nuclear fission. According to provincial Green Party leader Larissa Shasko, the nuclear reactor technology is “too expensive, too dangerous, and is not needed.”
“There are safer alternatives,” she says, cautioning against the health and environmental risks involved with developing nuclear power.
Indeed, the University of Winnipeg has submitted a proposal to produce medical isotopes without the use of a nuclear reactor within three years, at a fraction of the cost projected in the proposed University of Saskatchewan research reactor. At a cost of $35 million, the University of Winnipeg proposes to produce medical isotopes using an existing particle accelerator.
A particle accelerator uses electricity to make electrons travel at incredibly high speeds. The beams created by these high-speed electrons can be used to produce medical isotopes. Some medical isotopes produced with a particle accelerator must be used in conjunction with a special type of scanner called a PET (positron emission tomography) scanner – a tube-shaped machine that senses the radiation from isotopes within a patient’s body and uses the information to create three-dimensional images. According to Dr. Dale Dewar, executive director of Physicians for Global Survival, “PET scanning produces better images than conventional radioisotope use.”
But the isotopes used by PET scanners decay relatively quickly. This requires particle accelerators to be located close to the medical facilities that will use the isotopes they produce.
The Expert Review Panel on Medical Isotope Production supports exploring options for a particular type of particle accelerator, called a cyclotron, as a viable source of medical isotopes. But the Panel cautions that “the cyclotron option would necessarily have to co-exist with and rely upon other supply options… to satisfy demand in smaller, more remote locations.”
The short half-life of cyclotron-produced isotopes make this technology “suitable only for large centres and surrounding hospitals,” says the report.
But this wouldn’t be different than the current situation. Dewar points out that “rural communities don’t have access to medical procedures using isotopes at present.”
Existing technology
The University of Saskatchewan already has a cyclotron. It fires electrons into another machine called a synchrotron, which uses radiation to study surfaces and materials. The university uses the synchotron for research in archeology, earth sciences and biomedical research.
According to Iain Harry of Crown Investments Corporation, who helped write Saskatchewan’s research reactor proposal, “the scientists could just refocus the synchrotron and it could make medical isotopes.”
So why didn’t Saskatchewan propose to produce medical isotopes using technology that already exists at the university? According to Harry, “Saskatchewan’s primary interest is not in the commercial production of medical isotopes; our interest is in working with the University of Saskatchewan to build a world-class nuclear research and development facility in Saskatchewan.”
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has indicated that while it may run intermittently for the next few years, the Chalk River reactor will be shut down permanently by 2016. When that happens, Canada will lose an important tool for nuclear research and development activities, says Harry. “So there’s an opportunity there,” he adds.
Jumping the gun
The opportunity to fill the research and development shoes of the Chalk River reactor led the University of Saskatchewan and the provincial government to submit their research reactor proposal in July 2009. This raised the ire of citizens involved in the Uranium Development Partnership (UDP) consultation process who felt the government was jumping the gun by proposing a reactor before the consultations had finished. Building a research reactor was one of the recommendations made in the UDP report, and one of the topics still being discussed at the province-wide consultations.
In his final report, released to the public in September, UDP consultation chair Dan Perrins found that, of those submissions that expressed support for producing medical isotopes, “nearly three-quarters supported medical isotopes created without [nuclear] fission.” Some of the submissions that did not support nuclear isotopes cited “health and safety concerns around uranium, concerns about the suitability and reliability of the technology currently used to create medical isotopes, and a mix of other concerns,” Perrins writes.
However, Harry contends, “those consultations are not a reflection of public opinion. And in fact public opinion appears to be strongly in favour of considering nuclear power as an option, and certainly very strongly in favour of research and development.”
“I don’t think that the fact that people are concerned about things like waste and public safety means that the government shouldn’t consider pursuing a research reactor as a good project for Saskatchewan,” he adds.
Who will foot the bill?
Some faculty at the University of Saskatchewan are skeptical of the proposed research reactor. “This is going to be taxpayers’ money and in the end the uses of this research reactor will be for private industry,” says anthropologist Dr. Alexander Ervin. Ervin is concerned that uranium mining companies like Saskatoon-based Cameco and France-based Areva, and nuclear power company Bruce Power will receive the benefits of the proposed research reactor, while the costs will fall on students. “The university will be required to manage some portion of that operating cost… I could see a future scenario where these cutbacks are downloaded to students,” he says.
“Already this year they’ve been cutting back on sessional appointments… and access to labs and languages. That which was delivered to students is consistently being reduced while their fees are going up,” Ervin continues.
Ervin points to the university’s increasingly autocratic administration as a main factor in the decision to propose a nuclear reactor at the school. “There is a small, closed group of people that make these decisions – top-down planning,” he says. The University of Saskatchewan’s vice-president of finance, Dr. Richard Florizone, is also chair of the Uranium Development Partnership.
Opening the door to nuclear waste
From Dec. 7-9, 2009 the Nuclear Waste Management Organization held open houses in Regina, Prince Albert and Saskatoon. The federal government has tasked the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, which is funded by the nuclear industry, with finding a home for Canada’s used nuclear fuel. The organization is looking for a willing community to host an underground storage facility for the highly radioactive waste in one of what they dub the four “nuclear provinces:” Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan. The three eastern provinces are potential sites for the waste repository because they are home to nuclear power plants. Saskatchewan was included because of uranium mining operations in the province.
Professor Ervin worries that building a research reactor at the University of Saskatchewan may open the door to the nuclear waste being stored in Saskatchewan: “If we start creating the nuclear waste it’s going to be very difficult to… claim that ‘no we can’t have it our backyard.’”
According to officials from the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, 90 per cent of Canada’s used nuclear fuel is produced in Ontario and stored on-site at reactors in that province. Ervin does not see the logic in having “all these trucks coming in from Ontario with the nuclear waste.” But the Uranium Development Partnership recommended that the Saskatchewan government support any community willing to accept the repository.
Next steps
According to Harry, the University of Saskatchewan’s proposal was one of about 20 proposals submitted to the federal government. “A few of them were large, major proposals that suggested the generation of medical isotopes using research reactors, but the vast majority were non-nuclear isotope generation proposals,” he says.
If the federal government follows the recommendations of the expert panel on medical isotopes, which prioritizes the development of a nuclear research reactor, Saskatchewan’s is one of a handful of proposals they may consider.
Harry says the federal government’s decision on whether to build a research reactor at the University of Saskatchewan is “part of a larger decision that they’ll have to make around the future of Atomic Energy Canada Ltd. [the federal Crown corporation that owns and operates the reactor at Chalk River], and… Canada’s role in nuclear research and development.”
There has been some speculation that the federal government will privatize the Crown corporation, which has been a black-hole for federal subsidies for decades. If the federal government wants to get out of nuclear research, they will be more likely to support proposals that use the cheaper, non-nuclear cyclotrons to produce medical isotopes.
Good article Brett, I couldn’t find any technical errors, other than the fact that Lisa Raitt is no longer minister of natural resources.
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