Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. has decided to scrap the development of its two new MAPLE medical-isotope reactors at its Chalk River, Ont. laboratories after pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the project.
Gary Lunn, the minister of Natural Resources told reporters Friday that the crown corporation's project "has been plagued with problems since its inception."
"It has never produced one isotope. Not one," he added.
The reactors were completed in 2000, but have yet to meet the safety standards needed to be turned on. Lunn noted that millions more dollars could be poured into the project but that there was no guarantee it would ever work.
"We are making the right business decision given the circumstances,'' AECL president Hugh MacDiarmid said in a release Friday.
"Our board of directors and senior management have concluded that it is no longer feasible to complete the commissioning and start-up of the reactors.''
The MAPLE reactors, which were described as the first reactors in the world dedicated solely to medical isotope production, were intended to be able to supply the entire global demand for molybdenum-99, iodine-131, iodine-125 and xenon-133.
AECL said that the world's current supply of medical isotopes would not be impacted by the decision.
Medical isotopes are used for a variety of tests and treatments, including for cancer, heart problems, and bone ailments.
"There was no solution," Lunn said. "This is about good governance. It's about good management and it allows AECL to focus on its core business line, on building power reactors which they've been very successful at."
Lunn said the previous Liberal government, which approved the project in the 1990s, was advised not to go ahead with the project, but did so anyway.
Chalk River was at the centre of a controversy in November after the facility's National Research Universal (NRU) reactor was shutdown over safety concerns by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.
The commission -- responsible for setting licensing, health and safety rules for the country's nuclear facilities -- refused to allow the reactor to restart after finding it had been operating without a backup emergency power system for cooling pumps for 17 months.
The shutdown led to a critical international shortage of medical isotopes. Nearly a month after the shutdown, Parliament voted unanimously to bypass the order and restart the reactor.
Shawn-Patrick Stensil, an energy campaigner with Greenpeace, said on CTV's Mike Duffy Live that the crisis was caused because of the delays with the two smaller reactors.
"What we've seen here in Ontario is all the reactors undergo cost overruns and delays and technical problems," he said. "AECL is a company that is struggling to survive . . . and it has to raise some warning flags . . . when the company can't get two small reactors to work."
AECL's NRU reactor, which produces the medical isotopes, has an operating licence valid until October 2011, and the AECL said it will work on keeping that reactor open beyond that date.
"We recognize the important role that NRU plays in the supply and delivery of medical isotopes to patients in North America and around the world,'' MacDiarmid stated.
"AECL is committed to supplying medical isotopes from NRU in a safe and reliable manner.''
