You raise some very good points.
The association continues to ask that the MAPLE situation be revisited. Clearly, it is expensive to produce isotopes. Based on the information that we have received in recent months, reactor operators prefer to use their reactors for research instead of producing isotopes because it is much more profitable.
I do not have the inside track. We do not know whether, from a financial standpoint, the decision to stop producing medical isotopes for the rest of the world is a good one. But there is absolutely no question that Canada needs a domestic supply, so that what happened last week does not happen again, when the president of the Ontario Association of Nuclear Medicine commented that technetium could be sold on the market to the highest bidder. That would mean we are in a time of shortage.
Canada must, at the very least, produce its own domestic supply. According to reports published last year by the National Academy of Sciences in the United States, the world uses approximately 12,000 6-day curies. Canada needs at least 1,000 6-day curies a week for itself. That is the bare minimum. It is a shame to see technology disappearing and heading to other countries.