Ignatieff Supports McMaster's Bid to Produce Isotopes

Michael Ignatieff spoke out on the isotope issue today, stating the Liberal Party's support of McMaster University's proposal to start producing Moly-99 medical isotopes at its research reactor. Ignatieff's statement comes after months of fairly continuous nagging by local media on why the government has been deaf to the University's repeated offers of help throughout this growing crisis.

Maybe now, finally, we'll get a straight answer out of Lisa Raitt on this.

In case you haven't been keeping up, McMaster initially proposed this plan the first time Chalk River went down almost two years ago. It would cost a relatively modest $30 million over 5 years (now they're saying $44 million) and wouldn't require building anything or developing any new technology. In fact, if they had gotten the money and the go-ahead back when they first approached the government, they would be producing all the isotopes Canada needs right now.

The lack of government interest in this seemingly obvious and non-controversial solution is absolutely baffling. So baffling, in fact, that the Hamilton Spectator published an editorial a couple of weeks ago questioning the government's silence.

For two years, McMaster has been lobbying the government to make the university a backup producer. It had previous experience in that role back in the 1970s during a previous Chalk River shutdown. But for reasons no one can explain, Ottawa has been deaf and dumb on the McMaster proposal.

Considering the current crisis, and absolute lack of a backup or any other plan, Ottawa and Atomic Energy Canada Ltd. look very foolish, and inhumane to boot, especially considering the presence of a viable backup option in their own back yard.

That editorial actually provoked a response from Lisa Raitt. Well, sort of. Actually, it reads more like a collection of briefing book talking points strung together in more or less random order:

The government of Canada has made it a priority to work with other countries, nuclear reactor operators and isotope suppliers to improve collaboration on a global scale and to reduce the impacts of the Chalk River nuclear reactor outage on Canadians.

The way the product moves through the supply chain -- how it is purchased, sold and arrives at hospitals -- is the realm of the private sector.

No government can guarantee distribution of specific quantities of product to users at a guaranteed price.

The government of Canada is working to promote market responsiveness and transparency to achieve better, more predictable supply.

In large measure, the system has been coping during the global shortage.

blah blah blah...

Curiously, the word "McMaster" is not mentioned once in her response.

If Lisa Raitt ever does another interview or takes questions at a press conference, I suppose one could ask her point blank what the government intends to do about McMaster's proposal. If she ever decided to do another town hall I'd ask her myself. I've sent her an email, but I'm not holding my breath.

C'mon, Lisa - surprise me. Give me a straight answer. I promise I'll let everybody know.

Isotope Crisis: What Impolitical Said

I've been slacking off on my blogging this summer because... well, it's summer. Get over it.

Besides, my very favourite nuclear blogger Impolitical has been doing a top notch job chronicling the Chalk River / Lisa Raitt / isotope debacle without the need for any added commentary from me.

Today's post discusses McMaster University's repeated and unheeded pleas for the federal government to give them the go-ahead and the relatively small amount of cash they need to enable them to start producing Moly-99 isotopes. Turns out they first made this offer a year and a half ago, stating that it would only take them 18 months to start production.

In other words, if the government had taken them up on it then, they would be producing large quantities of moly-99 isotopes RIGHT NOW.

I'll be asking Lisa Raitt about this, but assuming she even bothers to answer me I'm pretty sure I know exactly what her response will be:

"We are aware of McMaster's capabilities and this is one of the options we're considering."

Chalk River Quotes of the Day

From a G&M article entitled, "How Canada let the world down":

What's disappointing about the crisis isn't so much that the Chalk River reactor sprung a leak (or, rather, several of them) – that's what happens to a 52-year-old reactor, said Norman Laurin, a nuclear physician at the Trois-Rivières Regional Hospital in Quebec.

What's frustrating, he said, is that the ensuing crisis was entirely avoidable.

“Those are very, very complex technical issues. I don't blame them for taking the amount of time that is necessary,” Dr. Laurin said. “It's not the government's fault that the NRU reactor is broken. … It's the management of the crisis that should have been a lot better.”

Meanwhile, Stephen Harper is disappointed. In AECL. And so is Lisa Raitt:

The day before the prime minister made his comments, Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq and Raitt released a joint statement saying they, too, were disappointed about the latest setback for the still-offline reactor.

"We have asked AECL to provide a firm return-to-service plan as soon as possible, and we have underscored to them that their first priority is to return the NRU reactor to service, consistent with maintaining the highest standards of safety and security," the ministers said in the statement.

And:

...Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt said that fixing the reactor is the best way to ensure a supply of isotopes in the coming years.

"That is the main fact of it," she told CTV News Channel on Thursday.

Because apparently one can repair holes, reverse corrosion, and safely restart a leaky reactor through sheer force of political will. Now get to it!

(for a somewhat more nuanced summary of the situation, check here.)

MAPLEs Shutdown Prematurely: Scientists

The head of the MAPLE engineering team, as well as several independent nuclear scientists appearing before the NR Commons Committee, were united yesterday in their opinion that shutting down the MAPLE reactors was a mistake, and that they should be restarted.

The money quote:

"We were probably four months away from putting the final test in. That test would have contained the engineering fix."

Meanwhile, Lisa Raitt is starting to back peddle a bit from the government's official position that the MAPLEs should be completely written off. Of course, this isn't keeping her from continuing to promote the keystone of her party's ideology: Privatize Everything.

Ms. Raitt told reporters yesterday that the government would consider allowing a private company to take over the MAPLE project. "There are pieces that are not the reactor that are still utilizable, with still-good infrastructure," she said.

Once again, what you are hearing is the sound of a government that doesn't believe in government. A government that believes that there is nothing government can do that private enterprise can't do better. A government convinced that financial profit is the only true barometer of value, regardless of the long term societal benefits of a given enterprise.

I can't wait for them to get around to Canada Post.

UPDATE: The always awesome David Akin has a quick & dirty summary on his blog of both the MAPLEs timeline and the testimony of those independent experts who testified today.

Wednesday Morning Notes: Isotopes, Game Theory, and the PBO

Lazy mid-week blogging:

1) McMaster Reactor Steps Up.

I think I've mentioned before that my husband used to work at the accelerator lab at McMaster University as a nuclear safety technician way back in the late 70s (I'll have to dig up a copy of his 'Nuclear Bunnies' 'zine for you some time). Anyway, apparently Mac has now done the math and determined that the University's reactor can, in fact, produce enough Tc-99m needed to supply about 20% of the North American market. They just need (you guessed it) a biggish pile of cash to do it.

I did find this statement particularly interesting:

The president of the Society of Nuclear Medicine, Dr. Robert Atcher, is saying the long-term solution to the worldwide isotope shortages isn't necessarily in building new reactors.

"It turns out that our real problem isn't that there aren't enough reactors to make medical isotopes," Atcher told CTV on Tuesday.

"It's the production facilities that we use when we take those targets out of the reactor and process them to remove the medically useful isotopes -- that capacity around the world is very limited. So we don't need necessarily to build any more reactors; we need to build those processing facilities."

UPDATE: The Natty Post picked this up this morning, quoting the McMaster facility's manager as saying that all they need is the non-weapons grade uranium and the trained staff and they're good to go.

2) 'Parliament Without a Cause'

A brilliant essay by Andrew Steele in yesterday's Globe & Mail on the application of game theory to this week's political showdown. He comes to some interesting conclusions about the pros and cons of a summer election for each of the four federal parties, but really - just watching someone draw parallels between the political brinksmanship in Canada's current multi-party minority government and the 'chicken' scene in 'Rebel Without a Cause', is just... wow.

Go read.

UPDATE: CalgaryGrit liked it too.

3) Kevin Page Vindicated

The Library of Parliament Committee has finally reached their verdict:

Parliament's budget watchdog is woefully underfunded, the Library of Parliament committee said in a report released Tuesday. The committee recommended his 2009-2010 budget be raised to $2.8 million from $1.86 million.

Parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page's current budget is $323,000 short of his projected spending for the fiscal year and well short of the $2.75 million he was supposed to get before his budget was cut.

"Even with a $2.75-million budget it was virtually impossible to provide scrutiny of departmental estimates [planned expenditures] representing over $240 billion per year," the committee said.

"The reduction will mean that the scope for the PBO to fulfil the legislated mandate will be further reduced."

Assuming anybody is actually planning to act on the committee's recommendations, this is excellent news for our much beleaguered Paliamentary Budget Officer - who, BTW, recently looked at Jim Flaherty's numbers and concluded that there is no way in hell the government will be able to dig itself out of the deficit hole any time soon without severely cutting programs or (gasp!) raising taxes.

Kevin Page: the Last Honest Man in Ottawa.

OR NOT: The Toronto Sun is spinning this as putting Page on a "tight leash", insisting that he not hold press conferences or release his reports to anyone besides MPs an Senators. They also reference to Page's release of the Afghan War cost analysis during the election - a move which, they forget, was agreed to by all four parties.

This is the actual quote from the press release on the report:

The report proposes 10 recommendations aimed, among other things, at increasing funding for the Parliamentary Budget Officer, consistent with his following existing procedures at the Library of Parliament and respects the confidentiality of the work of parliamentarians and committees; and permitting the publication of independent reports as long as they are presented first to parliamentarians.

That doesn't sound like a spanking to me - that sounds like they're saying, "Carry on".

"MAPLES never produced a single isotope... oh, wait... you mean THOSE isotopes?"

Ever since the latest Chalk River isotope debacle started reaching crisis proportions, the folks at MDS Nordion has been trying to tell people that those supposedly fatally flawed MAPLE reactors - the ones the Conservatives mothballed a few months ago - might just be salvageable after all.

Lately, they've been saying it to the Natural Resources Committee:

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper repeated that defence of the government's decision, saying, "after hundreds of millions of dollars and years and years of investment, not a single isotope had been created and the expert assessment we received was that there was no realistic reason to believe there would be any isotope production for years and years to come, if ever. So it was not a viable project."

But Jill Chitra, a vice-president and professional engineer at MDS Nordion told the House of Commons Standing Committee on Natural Resources that is incorrect.

"From 2000 to 2008, the MAPLE reactors ran numerous times at various power levels, up to 80 per cent power," Chitra said. "(Isotope) targets were inserted in the reactor for a number of those tests. When targets are inserted in the reactor and it operates at power, isotopes — Moly-99 — is created."

Chitra said that the targets were simply not processed or harvested.

"Those targets could have been removed and processed and you'd have had medical isotopes for sale," Chitra said. "It's one of the reasons we think MAPLE has potential."

This flies in the face of what we have previously been told about the MAPLE reactors, which is that they are fatally flawed and cannot be operated safely. And of course, one cannot forget that MDS has a considerable financial stake in the MAPLE reactors.

So what is the truth?

I found this article to be particularly informative, in that it explains what a positive energy coefficient is and why it can be bad, but isn't necessarily always bad. In fact, the only time when it would be bad is if all primary and backup power to the reactor suddenly shut off AND the entire crew at the reactor had either died, disappeared, or ascended in the Rapture at that same exact moment, preventing them from conducting a safe manual shutdown.

Yes. That would be bad.

On the other hand, the odds of that happening are so utterly astronomical that it makes the whole Rapture thing seem plausible. And if some unforseen catastrophe were to cause a complete power shutdown and the deaths of every person at Chalk River (a 10.5 quake? a meteor?), I would imagine we would be dealing with a significantly bigger problem than a melting reactor.

Far be it for me to suggest that anyone compromise safety when it comes to a nuclear reactor - even a little one. But given the near certainty of people actually dying from undiagnosed cancers sometime in the forseeable future if this situation isn't rectified, maybe it's time to reconsider our options. Preferably with the help of someone without a financial or ideological interest in the outcome.

(H/T to David Akin, who is going to have to write a book about all this someday.)