Canada considers splitting its nuclear agency to help resolve medical isotope shortage

Canada considers splitting its nuclear agency

TORONTO — Canada may divide its nuclear agency into two units in a bid to resolve the global shortage of medical isotopes, which are used for medical imaging to diagnose cancer and heart disease, Canada’s natural resources minister said Friday.

Lisa Raitt said the government would likely separate state-owned Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. into a research division that includes the medical isotopes reactor and another division for the pressurized heavy water reactors that generate electric power.

The government has hired investment bankers N.M. Rothschild & Sons to develop a restructuring plan for AECL, Raitt said, and they are scheduled to report back to her in the next few months.

The National Research Universal Reactor in Chalk River, Ontario, is an aging Canadian reactor that makes about a third of the global supply of medical isotopes. It was shut down in May because of a heavy water leak and is expected to remain idled into March.

The shutdown sparked a worldwide shortage of radioactive isotopes, which are injected into patients so radiologists can pinpoint areas of higher radiation and spot changes in the body to enable them to make more accurate diagnoses.

“AECL needs to focus on the one aspect of their commercial side, their selling of nuclear reactors and we want to equip them the best way to do it. But equally important is the Chalk River labs side,” she added.

In 2007, the reactor was ordered closed by Canada’s nuclear regulator until mandated safety upgrades had been completed. The nearly monthlong shutdown that resulted sparked a critical global shortage of medical isotopes, and only ended when Canada’s Parliament voted to bypass the regulator’s order.

Officials have said another lengthy shortage would force hospitals to delay non-urgent tests.

There’s no quick fix to solving the medical isotope shortage, Raitt said Friday, saying it would take at least five years to build a new facility to produce medical isotopes.

“The short-term solution is global co-operation and managing the short supply,” she said.

The minister also said she sent letters this week to her counterparts in other isotope-producing countries to make sure they coordinate their reactor schedules next year.

An aging nuclear reactor in the Netherlands that produces isotopes had a power outage this week that accelerated a planned maintenance outage. It will undergo major repairs next spring. Exports of isotopes from a new reactor in Australia won’t happen until later this year or early next year, said Raitt. The United States is looking at producing its own isotopes.