Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility |
 | Regroupement pour la surveillance du nucléaire |
Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility |
| Regroupement pour la surveillance du nucléaire |
[ Version français ]
October 1991
In 1991, the Campaign for Nuclear Phaseout played a key role in fostering Parliamentary debate on nuclear issues through the inroduction of Bill C-204 -- a piece of legislation that would have ended all licensing of new nuclear power reactors in Canada for a period of fifty years, without affecting those already in operation. One of the arguments used by the industry against the Bill was that, if approved, the legislation would hurt nuclear medicine and scientific research, by eliminating an important source of radioactive isotopes (some of which -- notably cobalt-60 -- are produced in Ontario Hydro's nuclear reactors). But this argument is fallacious, as the following document explains.
(See the Annex for a chronological account of a related controversy -- the SLOWPOKE controversy -- including comments from a number of independent people in the field of nuclear physics and nuclear medicine.)
X-ray machines are used for diagnostic purposes (to photograph internal bone structurs and organs) as well as for therapeutic purposes (to kill cancer cells and shrink tumours). X-rays have also been used to sterilize insects and animals, to check welds in industry, and for a host of other purposes.
Unlike nuclear reactors, these machines are completely safe once they are turned off. They generate no nuclear waste. They do not require robotic decommissioning. And they cannot be used to produce explosive materials for use in an atomic bomb.
At first, the radio-isotopes utilized were naturally-occurring ones such as radium-226, radium-224, radon-222, polonium-210, tritium (hydrogen-3), carbon-14, et cetera. Even today, "radium needles" and "radon seeds" are used to shrink cancerous tumours, and polonium-210 is used in industrial devices to eliminate static electricity. These naturally occurring radioactive substances have nothing to do with the operation of nuclear reactors.
Later, in the 1940s, when the first particle accelerators were built (beginning with the cyclotron of Ernest Lawrence in California) a host of artificial radio-isotopes became available -- produced not by the fissioning of uranium, nor by neutron bombardment inside a nuclear reactor, but simply by colliding a beam of accelerated subatomic particles with various target materials.
Although accelerators do create small quantities of lingering radioactivity, they do not pose the staggering high-level waste and proliferation problems associated with nuclear reactors, nor do they have any potential for catastrophic accidents of any kind, nor are they capable of producing weapons materials in militarily significant amounts.
Existing Canadian nuclear facilities are nowhere near their full capacity in terms of cobalt-60 production. Even a significantly expanded market for cobalt-60 could be serviced without building additional reactors. However, the market for cobalt-60 is not expanding, but shrinking -- as a result of which AECL has had to lay off (in recent years) many hundreds of workers associated with cobalt-60 production.
Over the next thirty or forty years, several options may be explored:
In any event, it is seriously misleading to state that nuclear medicine or the use of radiation in industry and in scientific research depends in any essential way upon nuclear reactors. Such uses existed long before the first nuclear reactors were built, and will continue to exist long after the last reactor is shut down.
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In the late 1980's, the debate over radio-isotope production in relation to nuclear reactors came to head in Québec, when Atomic Energy of Canada Limited offered to give a large "Slowpoke" reactor, free of charge, to the University of Sherbrooke Hospital complex, known as the "CHUS" [pronounced "Shoe" ~ this is an abbreviation for the Centre hospitalier de l'université de Sherbrooke. ] Originally intended only to provide hot water to heat the buildings of the Hospital complex, the Slowpoke "District Heating Reactor" -- designed for unattended operation, with no on-site operating staff -- was also touted by AECL as an inexpensive way to produce radio-isotopes for medical uses, even though the necessary design work had not been carried out for this function. In fact, even the District Heating function had never been demonstrated in practice or even approved in principle by the licensing agency (AECB : The Atomic Energy Control Board). Thus -- if it had been built -- the "Slowpoke" would have been an experiment in more ways than one. After being turned down at Sherbrooke, AECL tried to give the same type of Slowpoke reactor to the University of Saskatchewan. Again, AECL ran into strong opposition from many quarters. Meanwhile, the (much smaller) protoype Slowpoke District Heating reactor that had been built at AECL's Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment in Manitoba was never allowed to be operated at full power because of unresolved safety questions. Eventually AECL scrapped the entire Slowpoke District Heating concept as a non-starter. The following abbreviated chronology makes for an interesting and instructive story. A fuller account can be found in "The Slowpoke Journal", available for purchase on request. |
With a population of over 75,000 plus about 10,000 university and college students, Sherbrooke is the largest city in the Eastern Townships of Quebec.
The offer is welcomed by Hospital officials, particularly Dr. Etienne LeBel, former director of the Department of Nuclear Medicine, who -- much later -- will claim that the 10 Megawatt SLOWPOKE District Heating reactor proposed by AECL will also put the CHUS at the forefront of nuclear medical technology through the production of radio-isotopes.
