Chalk River: Crisis ‘foreseeable and preventable’

UPDATE! I’m out of town and not blog-reading.  Here’s updated material from JimBobby and TGB which I read *after* I posted what’s below!

It becomes clearer, with each bit of information, that Parliament was seriously hoodwinked on the Chalk River issue by Harper. From the Inbox:

—- Original Message —–

From: Gordon Edwards

Sent: Friday, January 18, 2008 1:47 PM

Subject: Isotope suppliers could have met 250% of world market needs

Clarification on isotopes:

It is important to realize that technetium-99m is not used

for therapeutic purposes but for diagnostic purposes, so

it is completely untrue that “lives” were at risk during the

so-called Chalk River isotope crisis. In fact it was a major

inconvenience and upset hospital schedules considerably,

but it put no lives at risk. And in fact the inconvenience

was avoidable.

Frank von Hippel is a very careful and credible researcher.

In a 2006 article he said that 250% of world demand for

short-lived radioisotopes like molybdenum-99 (the source

material needed for making technetium-99m available) could

be met by the world’s isotope suppliers and that even

without Canada, 100% of demand could be met.

Thus all the talk about a “crisis” was actually foreseeable

and preventable. If AECL and Nordion had plainly informed

their customers that the MAPLE isotope-production reactors

were seven years behind schedule (because those reactors

were seriously flawed in both design and construction) and

that Canadian supply depended on a 50-year old geriatric NRU

reactor that was not up to modern safety standards, then the

customers could have arranged for other suppliers to be prepa-

red to take up the slack. Result: no crisis.

The 2006 article by Kahn and von Hippel is at:

http://www.princeton.edu/~globsec/publications/pdf/Mo99_Kahn_&_vH_S&GS06.pdf