What Is Going On At Chalk River?

Lost in the media feeding frenzy surrounding Natural Resources Minister, Lisa Raitt's inappropriate, and insensitive remarks surrounding the "sexy medical isotopes issue", was Stephen Harper's pronouncement that Canada would eventually be out of the medical isotope business. There are some serious issues that need to be publicly aired before the Federal Government proceeds with this course of action. I, like most Canadians, haven't enough information to either agree or disagree with their plans. We need to examine the history of how it is that the AECL has effectively melted down economically since the Conservatives came to power. Also, who is going to gain from the failure and sale of the AECL? Canada is the supplier of 80% of the medical isotopes used in this country, and 40% of the isotopes used worldwide. In the early '90's the isotope marketing business Nordion was sold to MDS and AECL took back a forty year contract to supply medical isotopes to MDS-Nordion. Now that Harper has announced the shutdown of the aging Chalk River reactor, and the shelving of the Maple reactor project, (originally planned to replace Chalk River), MDS has launched a $1.65 billion lawsuit against the Federal Government, (guess who pays the costs on that?).

Further, now that they are shutting that facility down, what is going to happen to all of the spent nuclear fuel stored at the Chalk River site, and where will they store the ever increasing stockpile of nuclear waste?

This country definitely needs a long term policy to deal with the nuclear issue and short term economics, or political expediency shouldn't be the main criteria in making any of these decisions.

For additional information, check the links below:

http://thetyee.ca/News/2009/06/09/LittleReactorsCouldnt/

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/feb2008/cana-f22.shtml

http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/457036