Canada Bill Addresses Medical Test Issue

TORONTO -- Canada's House of Commons passed emergency legislation late Tuesday aimed at bypassing the Canadian nuclear safety watchdog and putting a swift end to a critical shortage of a radioactive substance used in diagnostic medical tests.

The bill would allow Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. to immediately restart a reactor in Chalk River, Ontario that was shut down last week. The reactor is North America's biggest source of the radioactive isotope that makes technetium-99.

The substance is used in at least 15 million medical scans a year in the United States, by one estimate. Those scans are used to diagnose and assess a wide variety of conditions including cancer, heart disease and bone or kidney illnesses.

They are often crucial for guiding therapy, telling a doctor whether a woman's breast cancer has invaded her bones, for example.

The reactor is not slated to reopen until mid-January and the Canadian Society of Nuclear Medicine estimates the shortage will cause delays in treatment for 50,000 Canadians each month that services are reduced.

The legislation would suspend for 120 days the oversight role of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, which found serious safety concerns with the reactor last month.

"The government has independent advice indicating there is no safety concern with the reactor," Harper told Parliament earlier Tuesday. "On the contrary, what we do know is that the continuing actions of the Liberal-appointed Nuclear Safety Commission will jeopardize the health and safety and lives of tens of thousands of Canadians."

Following frantic behind-the-scenes negotiations, all parties agreed to fast-track the legislation through Canada's House of Commons in one evening. A recorded vote was not taken Tuesday.

The bill still must be passed by the Liberal-dominated Senate, which will likely deal with it swiftly on Wednesday. The Canadian senate is unelected and rubber stamps most legislation passed by the House of Commons.

The reactor closed on Nov. 18 for maintenance. It was scheduled to open five days later but remained shut down to install safety equipment.

CNSC shut down the reactor after discovering that AECL had been operating it for a year without the required emergency power system connected to two cooling pumps.

The shutdown stopped the reactor's output of a radioactive substance called molybdenum-99, which is processed and packaged into canisters that are sold to big hospitals and specialized pharmacies. These cylinders are "milked" for their technetium-99, which is then prepared for use in the medical scans.

Since the technetium supply from each cylinder eventually peters out, the cylinders have to be regularly replaced. That is when the effect of the Chalk River reactor shutdown shows up.

Companies that make these cylinders say they're working with other molybdenum suppliers in Europe and South Africa to try to ease the shortage.

CNSC director general Barclay Howden said the Chalk River reactor's main cooling pumps must have power at all times, "under any conditions, regardless of whether it's earthquake, fire, flood or tornado," to ensure that the core doesn't meltdown.

"Overall, it's a key upgrade and therefore it's key to nuclear safety," he said in an interview Tuesday.

AECL has proposed an interim fix, in which one pump would be hooked up to the emergency power supply. Howden said CNSC is waiting to see a detailed plan before evaluating the proposal.