Natural Resources Committee on June 16th, 2009

Evidence of meeting #27 for Natural Resources in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was nru.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

Study of the Atomic Energy Canada Limited Facility at Chalk River and the Status of the Production of Medical Isotopes

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Linda Keen Specialist, Safety and Risk Management, As an Individual

Dominic Ryan President, Canadian Institute for Neutron Scattering

Christopher Heysel Director, Nuclear Operations and Facilities, McMaster Nuclear Reactor, McMaster University

Nigel Lockyer Director, TRIUMF

John Valliant Director, Isotope Research, McMaster Nuclear Reactor, McMaster University

Dave Tucker Senior Health Physicist, Health Physics, McMaster University

4:45 p.m.

Conservative

Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON

Professor Ryan, your presentation speaks of wide-ranging benefits to Canada of a multi-purpose neutron facility besides the generation of medical isotopes. You mentioned the automotive industry, which is now going through a transformation where everything has to be lighter and more fuel-efficient.

Given the urgency of today's isotope crisis, we would most appreciate your opinion on Canada's most cost-effective and most certain way to secure our supply of medical isotopes, both in the short term and for the coming decades.

4:45 p.m.

Prof. Dominic Ryan

For the short term, I think you're probably looking at McMaster University to fill some gaps, and that's for the next few months while NRU is brought up.... I share the confidence of my colleagues here that the engineers at AECL will be able to bring NRU back into functioning. I have no doubt that those people know what they're doing and they will be able to make the needed repairs. They will make them for the long term. They're not going to just duct tape this thing. They are going to do a proper job. They want it to run through at least until 2016, so they have some time to build on a next-generation instrument, which is where we go after that. It has to be a new research reactor because you want to keep all the function that is present in NRU for the next 40 or 50 years. We have constantly used, upgraded, and added to what we can do there, and there's no sign that's stopping. Every major industrialized country has at least one research reactor facility. Some have multiple ones. In fact, China will be bringing its second one online in 2016, which is when we're actually going to shut down our only one. It doesn't seem to make sense that we should be falling behind in these things.

4:50 p.m.

Conservative

Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON

Dr. Lockyer, it seems that various accelerator-based methods for production of moly-99 can be researched and evaluated. Also, new types of isotopes might be tested for clinical applications. All these tests will require time, years, and investment of capital--millions of dollars--with no guarantee of success.

In the meantime, would you advise Canada to hold off committing to investing in a new multi-purpose neutron facility like the Canadian neutron facility proposed by Professor Ryan until accelerator options have been evaluated?

4:50 p.m.

Director, TRIUMF

Dr. Nigel Lockyer

I'm taking the position that you can use a very simple accelerator to produce moly-99. It's not an accelerator that's designed to produce neutrons. A neutron research facility is a completely different object. You're not going to do neutron research as he's talking about with the accelerator I'm talking about. I'm talking about a very focused, fairly small, fairly simple accelerator that you could literally buy today, for example, that would produce moly-99. It's focused on producing enough moly-99 for Canada. I think of it as being used to smooth out the supply. If the NRU is having problems, you always have a backup. As long as it's the same product, you can mix the two when they're both running, but when one goes down, the other one is there to back it up.

4:50 p.m.

Conservative

Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON

We shouldn't hold off committing to a new NRU while we wait for the accelerator to come online.

4:50 p.m.

Director, TRIUMF

Dr. Nigel Lockyer

I think the accelerator time scale is the medium time scale I've told you. So it's 2015.

June 16th, 2009 / 4:50 p.m.

Conservative

Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON

Thank you.

Mr. Heysel, you described your role in the isotope supply chain in the 1970s and stated in principle that you could supply 20% of the North American demand. What are the practical challenges that have risen between the 1970s and now that you need to address, and how long will it take before you can certainly deliver irradiated targets into the isotope supply chain?

4:50 p.m.

Director, Nuclear Operations and Facilities, McMaster Nuclear Reactor, McMaster University

Christopher Heysel

I think the major changes are availability of target material. That supply chain we used in the seventies no longer exists, so we've identified a replacement supply chain through France. The biggest challenge we have at the university would be to hire the staff and train them and qualify them to operate the facilities. We do need to work with AECL to ensure that the target we're delivering is compatible with their facilities so they can accept it physically and process it with the right chemistry there. When we put the proposal together about a year and a half ago we were proposing 18 months in an environment where NRU is running and everything is smooth and the supply chain is robust. Since the recent outage, we've started turning our mind to how we can shorten that. The next step to bring focus to that effort would be to get the stakeholders together to see which are the critical path items and where the most work and effort need to be placed.

4:50 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Leon Benoit

Thank you, Ms. Gallant.

We go now to the Bloc Québécois, Monsieur Malo, for up to seven minutes.

4:50 p.m.

Bloc

Luc Malo Bloc Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank our witnesses for being here.

Mr. Chair, I'm going to direct my first question to the people from TRIUMF and McMaster University. They have proposed solutions for producing isotopes. Given the crisis we are in right now, I would like to hear them.

The MAPLE reactor was supposed to replace the NRU reactor when it reached the end of its useful life in order to produce isotopes. When the government decided to drop the MAPLE reactors, did a government official call you to tell you that new solutions had to be found immediately because the NRU reactor was at the end if its useful life and that might cause a crisis? Did anyone call you to discuss the solutions you were offering, to see if those measures were feasible and, if they were, whether implementation could be fast-tracked? Did the government make initial contact with you as soon as it announced the end of the MAPLE project?