| Saskatchewan To The Rescue? |
| Sunday, 12 July 2009 | |
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Talk of isotopes has dominated the news this past week as the world attempts to find a new supplier after we learned the Ontario Chalk River reactor would be shut down until the end of the year. This is significant because it supplied one third of the worlds isotopes, used for detecting cancer and heart problems. But can Saskatchewan step in and be the hero? Premier Brad Wall seems to think so as the provincial government has made a proposal to the feds to build a new, nuclear reactor for medical purposes, "A research reactor would be more then just isotopes, it would also be about nuclear materials research and it makes some sense that we would look at the U of S because that's where the synchrotron is currently, where they are doing material science with light beams obviously. This whole debate on the uranium development partnership, I'm not sure many people have forgotten that we have a reactor in Saskatchewan, it's the Slowpoke reactor at the University. There's other things, perhaps other applications." Wall adds, "The technology is not there yet where you can have non-nuclear reactor isotopes, nuclear reactors are needed, research reactors are needed. I just want to make sure that Saskatchewan, should we decide to, is in a position to lead again, no just the country but the world and we're going to be ready to do that but be respectful of the process underway on the consoltaion." Some ball park figures for the price tag of the reactor are coming in at 500 million dollars. |
