Natural Resources committee  These are two different numbers. The $60 million that I have spoken about for Natural Resources Canada's programs is totally separate from the funding for AECL nuclear laboratories. The $164.9 million would not comprise the $60 million for supporting alternative ways to produce m

Natural Resources committee  None of it will go to supporting alternative technologies to produce medical isotopes. The $164.9 goes to AECL to fund their regular operations, which would include the operations of the NRU reactor, which, among other things, produces medical isotopes. I know it's a bit complica

Natural Resources committee  You're quite right that the half-life of what we produce in the cyclotron is six hours. It goes from the cyclotron to the hospital to be used in nuclear medicine to do diagnostics and these kinds of procedures. What would be exported is not really the isotope itself but the techn

Natural Resources committee  It would be up to the proponents to decide what they want to do, what their market strategy would be. The NRCan program supporting alternative technologies will support them to get to that phase so they will have the technology ready so that all the regulatory approvals will be i

Natural Resources committee  Since 2010 our department has invested $60 million in these alternative technologies. The policy has been that after 2016 the market should pick up what the health community finds to be the best medical isotopes that fit its needs, so the goal of the program really is to bring th

Natural Resources committee  They are Canadian suppliers but they can compete internationally. This is a global system, so they can sell the technologies wherever they would fit the market needs. The advantage of a technology like the cyclotron, for instance, is that it is localized. As opposed to being a

Natural Resources committee  That's correct.

Natural Resources committee  No, it's because of how the market has evolved. The world has adjusted to the fact that Canada announced in 2010 that the NRU would cease to produce medical isotopes in 2016, and new sources of supply have come onto the market.

Natural Resources committee  The answer is twofold. First, the government has committed to ensuring that NRU can produce until October 2016. That's part of the funding going to AECL, to make sure that this will continue until 2016. Then there are programs in our department, Natural Resources Canada, that

Natural Resources committee  I'm happy to take this question, Mr. Chair. The government announced in 2010 that the NRU reactor would cease to produce the medical isotopes called molybdenum-99 in October 2016. That policy stands. If you look at the projections from the OECD on this, supply is projected to me

Natural Resources committee  I think we would need to refer to AECL to provide a more refined breakdown. What I could say is that within the entirety of the main estimates and supplementary estimates (A) and the budget, we would cover all the missions of the laboratories, which include science and technology

Natural Resources committee  We distinguished the funding to AECL to produce medical isotopes out of the NRU reactor from the funding provided to companies that are looking at alternative ways to produce medical isotopes. From the first item of the money to AECL to produce medical isotopes that would be part

Natural Resources committee  The medical isotopes market is really a global one. When we look at the future, and we've done a third party analysis of what is the projected demand and supply, which comes out of the OECD's Nuclear Energy Agency, the expectation is that supply will meet the demand even after th

Natural Resources committee  I could not provide you with the exact number, but I know that part of the funding provided to AECL at this point in time would include the work that has to be done to put together the safety case that AECL would put before the regulator, the CNSC, to seek an extension of the lic

Natural Resources committee  I'm happy to answer that question, Mr. Chair. If we look at the practice in the past, $102.1 million was always provided to AECL in the main estimates, and each year we'd look at the incremental amount that would be required to fund the operations of the laboratories. If you loo