Chalk River shutdown sparks isotope shortage
World’s 3 top producers down, resulting in 70% shortfall
TORONTO An unplanned shutdown of the aging Chalk River nuclear reactor has the country on the verge of a major shortage of medical isotopes, the president of the Canadian Association of Nuclear Medicine said Friday.
Dr. Norman Laurin said the forced shutdown of production at the Chalk River facility in Deep River comes at a time when two of the world’s three other major producers of medical isotopes are also out of operation.
“You have all at once probably over 70 per cent of the world production down. That’s the problem,” said Laurin, a nuclear medicine physician at the regional hospital in Trois-Rivières, Que.
Laurin said Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. has said it would know by late Friday or early Saturday whether it can resume operation of the Chalk River reactor this weekend.
If it can restart production, the current shortage should resolve itself within a few days, he said. Otherwise, severe shortages of isotopes will force hospitals to scramble to triage medical tests and find other ways to do essential imaging procedures.
“Everybody in the community is holding his breath right now,” said Laurin. “If they’re not back on track this weekend, we’re in as much trouble as we were in 2009.”
In 2009 a protracted shutdown at Chalk River coincided with a shutdown of the generator in the Netherlands, compromising between 60 to 70 per cent of the world’s demand for medical isotopes, Laurin said.
Patrick Quinn, director of corporate communications for AECL, did not return phone messages requesting an interview on Friday.
The current unfortunate confluence of closures came about quickly. Production was stopped in early November at the South African Nuclear Energy Corp.’s reactor at Pelindaba, near Pretoria, after a leak was detected from the reactor. And the Nuclear Research and Consultancy Group, which operates the Dutch production facility, announced Nov. 8 that it was shut down because of safety concerns.
“We were in a fragile equilibrium and it changed when the machine in Chalk River went down,” said Laurin, who wrote to members of his organization this week to inform them supplies will be tight.
“We would estimate a shortage of at least 30 per cent in the availability of Tc-99m” — technetium isotopes — “on Thursday, Nov. 21 and of 50 per cent on Friday, Nov. 22,” Laurin advised in the message.
“For the weekend of Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 23 and 24, the demand would be normally lower and availability will vary depending on suppliers.”
Technetium is derived from molybdenum-99 isotopes made by nuclear generators. Technetium is needed for a wide range of medical tests including diagnosing pulmonary embolisms — potentially fatal blood clots in the lung — or blockages in arteries that lead into the heart.