Natural Resources Committee on March 25th, 2010

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Turcotte, the government's recent budget provides for $35 million in investments by Natural Resources Canada for R&D work. Much of this work is done within the context of the TRIUMF project at UBC. Perhaps this is just a rumour, but I heard that it would take quite a long time before isotopes could be made available. These would be research projects. What is your opinion on the TRIUMF project?

[Dr. Eric Turcotte]

Are you referring to the cyclotron- or photofission-based technetium project?

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

The particle accelerator. I am not sure if it is the cyclotron.

[Dr. Eric Turcotte]

Two projects are currently underway under TRIUMF. One is a joint project with the Canadian research institutes. It is to manufacture technetium produced by cyclotron. This university project involves TRIUMF, the BC Cancer Agency, Sherbrooke University, an institution in London and the Cross Cancer Institute, in Alberta. Together, these people are trying to determine whether it is possible to produce technetium using a cyclotron. That was the second recommendation from the panel.

TRIUMF also has photofission technology. According to the experts, this technology should be avoided as much as possible, because it is very costly and, from an environmental standpoint it can generate more waste than a nuclear reactor. I am not sure what technology you are referring to, but I believe that cyclotron technology is probably what will cost you the least amount of money while giving you the best performance. The other technology may turn out to be more costly and more disastrous from an environmental standpoint.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Are they at the research stage or have they gotten further than that? Would it, for instance, be possible to produce technetium within a reasonable timeframe?

[Dr. Eric Turcotte]

Recommendations two, three and four of the expert panel have to do with research projects. It is probable that we may be able to produce technetium with this technology. However, marketing it would be another matter. The problem is that marketing would require a type of infrastructure no one in the world currently has. To try to produce technetium with cyclotrons, we do not have a robotic arm allowing us to work while protecting us from radioactivity. Staff is being irradiated. We do not have the commercial facilities needed to test the technology. It would require a $4-million to $5-million investment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Merci, Madam Brunelle.

Finally is Mr. Anderson for around two minutes.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Just to build on that a bit, it has been interesting this morning to hear about the myriad of different types of technology that are being developed.

I'm just wondering if both sets of witnesses can give us an idea of what the field of nuclear medicine will look like in 10 years. We're hearing about all kinds of things: PET scans, F18, cyclotrons being used, the large reactors, and reactors opening up around the world. What is your industry and nuclear medicine going to look like 10 years from now?

[Cyrille Villeneuve]

From our perspective, the technetium market will be flat at best, or will decrease to a certain percentage over 10 years, and the PET technology will increase significantly as soon as the equipment and the infrastructure are built. The PET technology offers a very nice alternative with better sensitivity and specificity, so it will give better results than what we have today.

It's like comparing what we had at the beginning when we were talking about thallium versus Cardiolite. Thallium was the first generation; Cardiolite, technetium, is the second generation. We believe that PET is the third generation. But considering the fact that there is a cost related to that, we still believe that technetium will play a role, but it will not increase in North America. It'll probably decrease slightly over the next 10 years.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Dr. Turcotte, I'd be interested in your response as well.

[Dr. Eric Turcotte]

I believe positron emission technology is by far the best solution for the Canadian public when it comes to diagnosing cancer and other problems. As Mr. Villeneuve just mentioned, we have worked with technetium-based technologies for the last 40 years. So there are 40 years of history on the production of radiopharmaceuticals, in this area. Positron emission tomography is 10 years old. It cannot replace everything that can be done well with technetium.

However, it is the road to take, the technology of the future. It really is. In time, we will transition from the old way of doing examinations and the new one. It will be beneficial to all. The fact remains that we are currently in this transition phase. I do believe we have to take this tack to allow medicine to evolve and to provide better service.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Anderson.

Thanks to everyone for your questions in the first hour of our meeting today, and thank you very much to the witnesses, Monsieur Villeneuve, Mr. Dawes, and Monsieur Turcotte, for your answers. They were very helpful to the committee.

I will suspend the meeting while we change witnesses.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

We are back again with our second hour. We are continuing our study of the status of the NRU reactor and the supply of medical isotopes.

Our second panel includes Daniel Banks as an individual, and Gordon Tapp from the committee for creation of a national laboratory at Chalk River. From TRIUMF we have Tim Meyer, head of strategic planning and communications.

Welcome gentlemen. I really appreciate you all being here today. We will hear presentations in the order you are in on the agenda.

Mr. Banks, go ahead for up to 10 minutes.

[Daniel Banks, As an Individual]

As the chair said, my name is Daniel Banks, and I'm here to testify as an individual, and more specifically, as an individual who is part of a grassroots group of volunteers known as CREATE. With me today is Gord Tapp, who's also a member of CREATE.

First, let me tell you what CREATE is. CREATE stands for Chalk River Employees Ad-hoc TaskforcE for a national laboratory. Some call it an awkward acronym, but I prefer to call it a creative one.

CREATE is, as I said, a grassroots, non-partisan group of volunteers. It includes current and former employees at Chalk River. I emphasize that each one speaks for himself and not for his employer. In May, Natural Resources Canada announced that AECL would be restructured. A few months later, CREATE was established as a grassroots effort to propose a vision for the future of Chalk River as a national laboratory that would include a new multi-purpose research reactor.

In the fall, CREATE developed and proposed its concept for the future mission of Chalk River, and we solicited support for our concept through consultations with other staff at Chalk River and vetted it with experts. We revised our vision as a result of those consultations and the feedback we received from the community and from staff. The results of this work are presented in our report, which is available on our website, “www.futurecrl.ca”. We've given some copies of the report to the committee clerk.

I would like to briefly present that vision.

The future Chalk River National Laboratory, or CRNL as I will call it, would be a vehicle for mobilizing science and technology to Canada's advantage by greatly broadening its scope. As a national laboratory, it would serve Canada, rather than serving one corporation as a company laboratory. We envision that CRNL would be Canada's premier laboratory for nuclear and related sciences.

Incidentally, I want to interrupt my presentation to comment that TRIUMF, which is also represented here today, is Canada's national laboratory for nuclear physics and particle physics, and although that may sound a lot like what we're presenting, it's quite different in practice. Chalk River and TRIUMF are complementary facilities rather than redundant ones. I just wanted to be clear on that.

Back to Chalk River National Laboratory—it would be a resource for researchers from across a broad spectrum, from fundamental sciences to industrial applications, including but not limited to research in development that supports the nuclear energy sector in Canada. Compared to the Chalk River of today, CRNL would be much more outward-looking by partnering and impacting at all levels of Canadian society. That outward focus includes several new functions—new to Chalk River—which includes leading diverse research programs beyond nuclear energy; partnering broadly with universities, industries, and government; as well as commercializing knowledge through high-tech spinoff companies incubated at Chalk River, or knowledge that is commercialized through transfer to industry partners and encouraging entrepreneurial investment in that sense.

In addition, by partnering with post-secondary education, CRNL will serve as a training ground for Canada's future generation of scientists and engineers by providing them with a creative research environment as well as world-class research equipment.

Such a national laboratory will also be a powerful tool for encouraging young people to seek science-based careers and for fostering a science and technology culture.

In summary, CRNL will be a major player in a greater mosaic of institutions across Canada that will help to build a sustainable national competitive advantage based on science and technology.

We see that the opportunity has arrived to begin a transition of Chalk River into this Chalk River national laboratory by establishing a future direction, such as we have proposed, with a suitable governance and business model to go along with that, in consultation with potential partners and clients.

In parallel to all of this, we also believe it's important to begin detailed planning for a new multi-purpose research reactor for research and isotope production that can take over and expand the functions of the aging NRU reactor over the long term. We believe the question of that new multi-purpose reactor is very closely related to the question of the future of Chalk River as a whole. It's difficult to consider those concepts in isolation.

Now that I have set out CREATE's vision, I want to emphasize a few points.

First, as a national laboratory, Chalk River would require baseline federal funding, but it would also attract revenue from various streams. Sources of revenue would include research partnerships with industries, including the commercial CANDU business that would result from the restructuring of AECL. It would also include full cost-recovery fees for access to its resources for proprietary research, waste management, or isotope production. We think this is indeed an important change. The practice of recovering full costs for proprietary access to the facilities would be a major step towards ensuring sustainability in a global supply network based on sound economics for isotope production.

Secondly, the future of Chalk River is a much larger question than the question of isotope supply. Of course, medical isotope supply is important to Canada, but it's only one of the issues. This was in effect recognized by the NRCan expert panel on medical isotopes, when it stated that “a multi-purpose research reactor represents the best primary option to create a sustainable source of Mo-99, recognizing that the reactor's other missions would also play a role in justifying the costs”.

Let me talk about the business model a bit more, because CREATE believes the other missions justify the costs.

Nuclear energy research and development will remain a key area. Canada's investment in the NRU reactor has been paid back significantly by spawning the Canadian nuclear energy industry, which is currently an enterprise of $6 billion per year, with significant room for growth. But even if no nuclear power reactors are built in Canada, R and D is needed to support the existing fleet of CANDU power reactors around the world.

For example, a research reactor would be used to obtain more precise knowledge of the conditions of materials inside nuclear power reactors that cannot be obtained by other means. It is likely the increased precision of that knowledge could allow Canada to safely extend the life of its reactors. Life extension of the fleet for even a few years would likely save Canada billions of dollars in electricity generation costs.

However, nuclear power is likely to be an even greater part of Canada's energy portfolio in the future than it is today, in part because we need clean sources of energy to replace depleting supplies of conventional fuels. In that case, nuclear R and D will be essential to take advantage of the energy available in our uranium deposits.

There are then all the other benefits of research in other areas, from biotechnology and nanotechnology to improving the reliability of aircraft components and bridges. There are also benefits in attracting and training highly skilled people. These benefits are more than the substantial economic impacts. They're also in health, energy, security, education, the environment, and the general well-being of Canada and the world.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Banks.

We go now to Tim Meyer, head of strategic planning and communications, TRIUMF.

Go ahead, please, Mr. Meyer.

[Tim Meyer, Head, Strategic Planning and Communications, TRIUMF]

Thank you for the opportunity to be here, Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the committee.

I want to compliment you on the organization of these panels. The first panel focused on emergency response and first aid. As witnesses, we're looking a little bit further down the road.

I'd also like to thank the citizens of Canada for their vote of confidence in TRIUMF with the announcement of core operating funds in Minister Flaherty's budget 2010. It really sets TRIUMF up to make a big difference for the future.

We're discussing today the present state and future vision for medical isotopes in Canada. I'm here to say that repairing the NRU reactor is only half the story. We need, and Canada needs, more than a return to business as usual.

Some may remember the oil crises of the 1960s and 1970s. These incidents gave the western world a glimpse of the fragility and the vulnerability of the oil-based energy supplies of the day. Although there's not a direct parallel, the current crisis in supply of reactor-based medical isotopes should open our eyes. Yes, a return to operation for the NRU is urgently needed, but is there a broader lesson?

Fortunately, Canada is rich with alternatives for making and using medical isotopes and there are promising moves forward to exploit this. In fact, Canada has a global advantage that we can use to save lives and maintain a dominant role in a billion-dollar global market. You've heard about some of these alternatives from my distinguished colleagues.

Let me say something about TRIUMF's role in this. As a national laboratory owned and operated by 15 of Canada's great universities, we are committed to developing short- and medium-term solutions, as well as a long-term vision for nuclear medicine in Canada. You've heard some of that from the other folks this morning.

We have a 30-year partnership working with MDS Nordion in Vancouver, which generates 15% of the medical isotopes exported by Canada each year. This amounts to about 2.5 million patient doses.

TRIUMF is a centre of excellence for the physics, chemistry, and biology of medical isotopes. We are fundamentally a basic research and development laboratory. Deployment of technologies we do with commercial partners. TRIUMF is not in the business of producing isotopes for commercial sale; we're in the business of generating the ideas and the technologies that true business people can use.

Our short-term solution examines the viability of using existing medical isotope cyclotrons around Canada for direct production of technetium-99m. That's the isotope actually used in the radiopharmaceuticals.

Dr. Turcotte referred you to this brief earlier. He is part of a collaboration that was funded in October of last year for $1.3 million, with support from NSERC and CIHR, to examine this technology. TRIUMF and the B.C. Cancer Agency are leading this effort. The collaborating institutions include Sherbrooke with Dr. Turcotte, Cross Cancer Institute in Edmonton, as well as Lawson Health Research Institute in London, Ontario, and there is a small company involved as well.

This technology would use proton beams from existing commercial cyclotrons to irradiate a new target material, known as molybdenum-100, to produce the technetium. The advantage of this technology is that we'll be conducting human clinical trials within 18 months and it could be deployed without significant changes to the equipment already in place around Canada.

The disadvantages, some of which you've already heard, are that the medical isotope cyclotrons in Canada are limited, and by directly producing technetium, which has a six-hour half-life, you're limited to how far you can transport this medical isotope. However, as the regular adage goes, most of Canada is concentrated within a few hundred kilometres of the major population centres.

Another advantage is that this technology, if proven in the laboratory, is easily licensed in the private sector. The participating institutions are using cyclotrons manufactured in Canada, as well as models manufactured by General Electric. So this technology could not only work in Canada but also be licensed around the world.

TRIUMF is also investigating a more sophisticated medium-term solution, known as photofission, about which you've heard several times, and Dr. Turcotte referred to it earlier. This builds on Canadian breakthroughs in accelerator technology and proposes to integrate almost seamlessly with the current supply chain for molybdenum-99 generators.

We used to use reactors as the most intense source of particles for experiments. The world is moving to using accelerators for some of these applications because they can be easier and cheaper to license and operate.

With support from CFI—the Canada Foundation for Innovation—and other agencies, TRIUMF is constructing a new multi-purpose research accelerator. This device, known as the e-linac, or superconducting electron linear accelerator, will be used to validate the proposal of creating molybdenum-99 with a linear accelerator using natural uranium.

So there are two distinguishing features of this technology. It does not use weapons-grade uranium. It does not use diluted weapons-grade uranium. It's actually using U238, the isotope most naturally abundant and occurring in the ground, for instance in Saskatchewan. The second element of this technology is that the current competitive advantage that Canada enjoys in producing moly-99 is based on the partnership between AECL and MDS Nordion in separating out the moly-99 from the uranium and the rest of the junk. Thus, linear accelerator photofission technology would use that same mechanical and chemical separation.

Now, TRIUMF is in the business of fundamental research. This is a technology demonstration, which will be the first experiment we run on this new accelerator. If this demonstration lives up to its promise, the technology could be commercialized and licensed by about 2015. We're working with MDS Nordion to benchmark the business case.

It's key to point out that there's been some confusion about this technology and its generation of radioactive waste. It does use electricity, not a nuclear power reactor. In fact, a more powerful accelerator being built in Switzerland using similar technology is going to be powered entirely by windmills. It's possible. B.C., of course, is plentiful in hydro power. We're also working with other solutions that span the space of short and medium term.

Now, our long-term vision asks the question: the medical isotope crisis is really a supply and demand issue, how long will the global demand for moly-99 last? And you've heard some of the expert opinions on that. Our assertion is that the market dominance of molybdenum-99 is going to last for about a decade and probably not much longer. The future is being driven by the so-called PET isotopes and technologies, about which you've heard quite a lot from both Lantheus Medical Imaging and Dr. Turcotte.

PET isotopes offer lower radiation doses to the patient, improved sensitivity resolution, and, perhaps not as well known, much more sophisticated probing of biological and pathological pathways within the body. As we've heard, the challenge is deploying the production infrastructure and the scanning infrastructure. There are 31 PET scanners in Canada. In terms of the scanners for using technetium, there are about 2,000. However, for the first time in the last 40 years, the new sales of PET scanners have surpassed the new sales of the technetium scanners. So we are on the cusp of a market shift.

Canadians are in a tough spot presently, with the shutdown of the NRU and the HFR reactor. Our health care providers and nuclear medicine specialists have been incredibly resourceful to help us get through this time period.

There are a number of exciting paths forward. New developments are quite promising, such as the $48 million in federal funds announced in budget 2010, which will be dedicated to research and development for diversifying the supply of medical isotopes. The future is bright, and there is much work to do.

Thank you, again, for your time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Meyer.

We will now go directly to questions, starting with the official opposition and Mr. Bains, for up to seven minutes.

Go ahead, please.

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Again, thank you very much to the witnesses for creating the time to come here before us and for making your presentations.

My question is for CREATE. I just want clarification on your organization and on your involvement in creating this group. When you created this group, did you receive any assistance from politicians or political parties? Could you elaborate a bit on the process of how this group was created, please?

[Daniel Banks]

Actually, Gord was more involved at the inception, so I'd like him to comment on that.

[Gordon Tapp, As an Individual]

Thank you.

My name's Gordon Tapp. I'm sort of the unofficial spokesperson for the CREATE team. I was present when Ms. Raitt made her announcement about the restructure of AECL in Mississauga in May of last year and a lot of uncertainty, of course, popped up among the employees.

I'm also the president of the Chalk River Technicians and Technologists Independent Union up at Chalk River. At that time we also had some people down at Sheridan Park. So in order to allay a lot of concerns about the future of the two paths that are going to be taken by the AECL pieces--that CANDU part and Sheridan Park and the research part that was typically in Chalk River-- I approached our local MP in Renfrew County, Mrs. Cheryl Gallant. I asked if she could address the employees up at Chalk River about NRCan's future plans.

A lot of us have seen changes at AECL over the past 20 years and we wanted to address those changes at the same time. A lot of us had a vision of what the future could be and it was suggested to us by Mrs. Gallant that if our voices are to be heard, we should do something on our own. At that time, several interested persons from AECL, or from the Chalk River site, got together, including retired employees, and we formed this committee.

So to directly answer your question of whether we got any help, the answer is no. I did supply some--

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

Thank you very much. I appreciate the clarification. I just wanted to clear the record on that.

I had a follow-up question with respect to a question that my colleague Mr. Regan raised in committee before the minister a few days ago. He asked the minister if there was any money set aside in the 2010 budget for the groundwork for a new research reactor at Chalk River. The minister clearly said no. There was no hesitation on the minister's part.

What's your reaction to that news and the fact that the government is very clear that there is no new money and they had no intention of investing any new moneys as well?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Go ahead, Mr. Banks.

[Daniel Banks]

Well, it's certain that beginning the planning process toward a new multi-purpose reactor would require a significant amount of funds. I don't know that we've actually seen the details of all of that money and how it's going to be used and whether any of that could be directed toward the planning process. It's not that we're looking for $1 billion in the budget now. If the reactor costs that much, we'll only know after some initial planning is done just to design the facility and see what it would cost in the end; that will depend on the design primers that you put in.

So I'm not disappointed that we haven't seen a $1-billion allocation at this point, because in the interest of proper planning and decision-making, that wouldn't be the next step.

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

You raise a good point about planning. As you're fully aware--we've heard from the government in its budget--next year they're going to slash and cut many departmental budgets. They're going to continue to limit the federal's capacity and continue to make significant cuts.

Don't you think it's not realistic, if you didn't receive anything this year, during a stimulus year...? What's the likelihood of additional funding on a going forward basis when there's going to be significant cuts?

It's very difficult to plan when you have no upfront money. Then the likelihood of future funding is very clearly going to be minimal, if next to nothing, because of the fact the government's going to actually cut money.

How does that play out for you? How does that help you in terms of your planning projections?

[Daniel Banks]

Being here as an individual, I can't really comment on how that affects the individual departments involved. Of course we know that some funds will have to come from somewhere. We certainly would like to see that sooner rather than later, just because of the risks involved in significant delays. NRU can be repaired and that's sort of a short-term fix. Planning for the long term has to take place at some point. We do recognize that some risks are involved, in that a new facility would take perhaps 10 years to properly plan, design, and build. That's about the timeframe you're looking at when, perhaps, NRU would no longer be available.

We do see there's a risk involved that, if there's a significant gap between the two facilities, could lead to the loss of a lot of key expertise in Canada. I think that's an important issue that should not be overlooked. If for some reason we no longer had the NRU reactor and there wasn't a certainty of a new facility, I think we would lose critical mass of expertise at Chalk River, probably quite quickly just because most talented scientists and engineers at that facility would be looking for jobs elsewhere.