Natural Resources Committee on June 16th, 2009

[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.

[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.

[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?

[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.

[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.

[Dr. Nigel Lockyer]

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

[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?

[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.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Ms. Gallant.

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

[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?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Dr. Lockyer, go ahead.

[Dr. Nigel Lockyer]

TRIUMF is a basic research facility. We normally do particle physics and nuclear physics and look toward the future. When the problems with the MAPLE reactor occurred, we were not thinking about producing moly-99. I don't think it's a natural place the government would call to ask if we could help them.

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

And what did you do?

[Dr. Nigel Lockyer]

We don't produce moly-99 now, and it's not something we'd proposed to produce in the future until we realized there was a problem. So we put up our hand and said we were able to do it.

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

And you were aware of that situation last week or two weeks ago?

[Dr. Nigel Lockyer]

No, but we did realize it after the MAPLE reactors were cancelled.

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

When was it exactly? Did anyone call you? Was it you who made the call?

[Dr. Nigel Lockyer]

We realized that ourselves.

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

What was your government's reaction? Did they say they wanted to fast-track the process so that it would be completed before 2014?

[Dr. Nigel Lockyer]

TRIUMF requested support to have a workshop with international experts to look at what we were considering. My colleagues here were part of it, and that was funded by Natural Resources Canada. So we did get some assistance, and we produced a report last November.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Monsieur Malo?

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

I think Mr. Heysel wants to answer.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. Heysel, go ahead.

[Christopher Heysel]

It's a little bit different from McMaster. During the 2007 outage, we were approached by our local MPs, who understood we produced isotopes on a commercial basis and asked what we could do. At that time, the three of us and other members of the university looked at what we had done in the seventies and put together a proposal to re-establish that production system.

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

So it wasn't the government approaching you.