Bruce Power will soon be able to expedite it's production of medical isotopes, with the construction of a new facility.
Stephen Lecce, Ontario Minister of Energy and Electrification, announced that a hot cell facility will be established in Bruce County, so that short-lived medical isotope lutetium-177 can be made locally.
"Every year, roughly 250,000 Canadians are diagnosed with cancer, and it's very difficult. I think what we need to offer them is hope and treatments and intervention that can save their lives," he said. "So we're here in partnership with the local SON (Saugeen Ojibway Nation), with Isogen and obviously Bruce Power, our government is proud to announce that we're going to be building a hot cell, which literally allows us to repatriate the processing."
The plant has been producing lutetium-177 at its Unit 7 reactor for the past two years, but has needed to ship the isotopes overseas to Germany for processing.
Lecce said having the ability to process the isotopes in the province as well will affirm its place as a nuclear powerhouse.
"The strength in building this in Canada, in Ontario, and here in Bruce, is that we become a one-stop integrated nuclear ecosystem, where we're doing everything from generation to production to medical isotopes to refinery: we're doing it all here in Ontario and the world is turning to Ontario as a source of leadership for clean energy and medical isotopes," said the Minister.
The home of the new facility hasn't been settled on yet, but it will either be on the Bruce site or at one of Isogen’s local facilities.
Eric Chassard, Bruce Power’s President and CEO, said the new facility won't take long to get up and running.
"When you deal with nuclear waste, for example, these types of things, they're the same type of facility," he said. "So it's not something completely new, we just need the right equipment and the right protection with shielding. But from a licensing point of view, the risk is very limited so we'll be able to go through this pretty fast."
Along with the new hot cell facility, Lecce also announced that the Unit 4 Major Component Replacement (MCR) Outage would begin on February 1, 2025.