"If I'm the government of Ontario or New Brunswick or China, I'm going to be leery of their ability to produce a 1,000 megawatt reactor if they can't produce a 10 megawatt reactor," said Dr. Duane Bratt, a nuclear policy expert at Calgary's Mount Royal College. Bratt said AECL is competing with other firms for contracts to build new advanced technology reactors, but may now have trouble convincing buyers it has the technical know-how.

At a time when nuclear power is enjoying a revival due to refurbishment projects at old reactors and concerns about greenhouse gas emissions and electrical supply, AECL has suffered two major hits to its credibility in the space of six months, Bratt said.

In November, there was the shutdown of the National Research Universal (NRU) reactor in Chalk River due to a dispute over safety measures between AECL and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), Bratt said. That dispute, and the resulting extended shutdown of the NRU, led to a worldwide shortage of medical isotopes. That crisis was eventually solved with an emergency session of Parliament and a decision by politicians to override the CNSC. Now, with the termination of two reactors that were to replace the NRU, AECL has suffered another hit, Bratt said.

Bratt explained the decision by AECL to stop work on the production of the MAPLE 1 and 2 reactors comes after years of work and millions of dollars spent, and appears to stem from a technical problem the corporation can't solve, no matter how much money is spent.

"It's one thing to say there are management issues at AECL, it's another to say there are technical issues," Bratt said.

As a result of the interruption in medical isotope supply, other countries have begun looking at getting into the business, eroding the dominant market share enjoyed by AECL and its partner MDS Nordion, Bratt said.

Dr. Jean Luc Urbain, president of the Canadian Association of Nuclear Medicine, said yesterday that patients and the Canadian economy had perhaps not been well served by the dominant market share. While the world got used to having a steady, reliable supply of medical isotopes from Canada, the shutdown of the NRU highlighted the lack of contingency planning, he said.

"Sometimes a monopoly very quickly becomes a liability," he added.

At the same time, he said Canadians have suffered because of a lack of access to state-of-the-art isotopes, such as luthetium and fluoro-deoxy-glucose. As a result, he said Canada has had trouble attracting doctors who want to be located in areas at the leading edge of nuclear medicine.

Urbain applauded the decision to shutter the MAPLE project, saying if it could not be made to work, the money would be better spent on diagnosing and treating patients.

He called upon the federal government to set up a task force to look at the supply of nuclear isotopes and at ways of ensuring Canada is on the leading edge of research and medical practice. He said a failure to adopt state-of-the-art technology is harming diagnostic capacity in Canada and the country's economy because patients are diagnosed later in the disease cycle when treatment is more expensive.

Bratt said he agreed that from a supply perspective, more suppliers make for a more stable supply. Bratt and Urbain said they are confident the NRU can continue to supply medical isotopes for years to come, but both said there are new suppliers now.

"From a Canadian nuclear industry side of things, it's nice to be the monopoly," Bratt said.

By Sean McKibbon, This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it , edited by Sarah Sussman, This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it and Nancy Girgis, This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it