Isotopes in Canada

Medical isotopes come from 4 places, Chalk River, Ontario, Belgium, the Netherlands and South Africa. Canada’s Chalk River is the biggest supplier of the raw materials for the isotopes in the world, supplying 60% of the world’s needs.

Canada spent $600 million on 2 new reactors, Maple I and Maple II, to replace the NRU but the government pulled the plug on it last year because we didn’t have the expertise to finish it.
MDS Nordion, which normally buys the Chalk River isotopes, wants the federal government to seek global expertise to kick-start the MAPLES.
“With the assistance of an international consortium of nuclear experts, the MAPLE facilities could be producing medical isotopes to the benefit of patients worldwide,” MDS Nordion president Steve West said.
MDS Nordion has launched a lawsuit against AECL over the MAPLE reactor cancellation.

According to CBC News (http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/02/04/chalk-river.html)

Canada could have avoided the recent medical isotope crisis if supplier MDS Nordion had joined international efforts to co-ordinate global production, a report in the Canadian Medical Association Journal says.
The article Monday in the journal said MDS Nordion wouldn't co-operate with Europe's two large-scale isotope suppliers — Nuclear Research and Consultancy Group in the Netherlands, and the Institut National des Radioelements in Belgium.
The European suppliers share concerns about safety and distribution, and co-ordinate production schedules to ensure one reactor is always running. They also communicate with another isotope supplier, Nuclear Technology Products in South Africa.
But they reportedly can't pry information out of Ottawa-based MDS Nordion, which provides about half the world's supply of isotopes, made at Ontario's Chalk River nuclear reactor.
"The one problem we have is that we never get information from the Canadians," Kevin Charlton of the Netherlands' Nuclear Research and Consultancy Group told the CMAJ.
AECL provides isotopes exclusively to MDS Nordion, which then reprocesses them and sells them to drug companies. AECL spokesman Dale Coffin said the Crown corporation plays no role in the distribution of isotopes.
Alan J. Kuperman, a policy analyst for the Nuclear Control Institute in the United States, told the journal it's not in MDS Nordion's commercial interests to join in international contingency planning with rival suppliers in Europe.
"They see themselves as the big dog," said Kuperman, a professor of public affairs at the University of Texas. "They are not going to share information with the small ones nipping at their heels."
Kuperman maintained there is plenty of "surplus capacity" among isotope suppliers but MDS Nordion and AECL didn't want their competitors to pick up the slack when the Chalk River reactor was shut down.
"Instead, they went to the public and the Canadian government. That was misleading and, one could argue, socially irresponsible."
The federal government has laid the blame for the isotope shortage primarily on the nuclear safety watchdog. It sacked CNSC president Linda Keen last month, arguing that she failed to take into account the impact of the reactor closure on isotope supply.
Keen says she couldn't authorize the startup of the reactor because she was legally bound to ensure the safety of Canadians from nuclear accidents.
Health Minister Tony Clement has maintained the government had no choice but to legislate reopening the reactor given Keen's intransigence and the absence of an alternate supply of isotopes.
Clement last week insisted that the four other isotope-producing reactors in the world could not have filled more than about 15 per cent of the gap left by the Chalk River shutdown.