Approximately 60% of the World’s medical isotopes are produced at a little town a three-hour drive northwest from Ottawa. Chalk River, Ontario is the site of a nuclear facility that has been operating since 1944. Yes, Canada has a big finger in the nuclear pie and has for quite a while.
The National Research Council (NRC) has been involved in the nuclear business since 1942 when a British and Canadian collaboration saw a lab opened in Montreal. Not talked about is the role the NRC played in what was called the Tube Alloys project, the codename for developing a nuclear weapon by Britain. Tube Alloys research was apparently rolled into the black box of secrets the Brits brought to the US as part of the Lend-Lease agreement and eventually became the Manhattan Project. We’ll never know, but it is a tantalizing secret.
National Research Universal (NRU) is a nuclear reactor at Chalk River that has been running since 1947. Cobalt-60 radiation was found to kill cancer cells when aimed at specific areas and was one of the first medical uses of nuclear radiation to cure, rather than kill people.
It could be argued that the entire nuclear medicine industry was created by AECL, providing the isotopes that make diagnosis possible using radioactive trace elements like Cobalt-60, Moly-99, Xenon-133, Iodine-125 and Iodine-133 for medical imaging.
The problem is, these elements have a shelf life, sometimes measured in hours, not even days. Hospitals that use the products can’t keep a stock of some isotopes and rely on regular deliveries from MDS Nordion, the private company that sells the output of the NRU.
The problem is, NRU is down. It was to be shut down for a couple of weeks for regular maintenance, but other things have cropped up that have kept NRU offline. This is not particularly surprising, as it is a 50 year old machine, that even with the best maintenance, will get cantankerous once in a while. Safety issues are another thing, beyond a machine being grumpy, speaking to the overall safety of NRU.
Chalk River has had its’ share of meltdowns: In the early days the technology wasn’t understood that well and as a consequence two reactors at Chalk have gone ‘foom!’ over the years. In one notable incident, Jimmy Carter, (yes, that Jimmy Carter) was at Chalk in 1952 when the NRX went bad and melted a section of its core, spilling coolant all over the place.
The military from CFB Petawawa were called to provide some folks to help clean up: They were given boots, mops and a dosimeter to swab up several hundred gallons of radioactive coolant that had splooged all over the floor of the NRX building. Even the NRU has had heartburn, in 1958 when there was a fuel rupture and fire.
The current NRU problem is this: Coolant pumps that provide heavy-water coolant to the reactor are powered by the regular grid of electricity, not by a dedicated, uninterruptible power source. If the regular power grid goes down, like in an ice storm, the coolant pumps don’t have electricity to pump coolant into the reactor. If this strikes you as scorchingly dumb, you’re not alone.
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) the group that oversees reactor safety in Canada, wants Atomic Energy of Canada, Limited (AECL), the folks who run NRU to fix that problem right smartly before they can start banging electrons together again. There are other problems with NRU, but the coolant supply is the real show-stopper.
To that end, our Prime Minister Stephen "Steve" Harper has, with the assistance of all parties, bulled legislation through to pull the CNSC authority for 120 days.
AECL gets to run without plates and insurance and the government has said "Git’er done lads!" to produce the needed isotopes.
It would be prudent at this point to remind our brilliant legislators that Chalk River is a three-hour drive North-West of Ottawa on Highway 17, the Trans-Canada highway. Prevailing winds in Ottawa are from the North-West and the Ottawa River, the body of water that supplies Chalk River, goes right by the back door of Parliament Hill, about 200 meters from the House of Commons.
Further downstream, 24 Sussex Drive, the PM’s residence, is perhaps 500 meters from the Ottawa River.
If the lab-coat brigade at Chalk don’t have their math right, Ottawa will find out a couple of hours after the fact. Hey, it’s only a urban area of 900,000 people.
RoadDave 