SASKATOON – It’s another step towards developing medical isotopes in Saskatoon.
The commissioning license will allow the project to undergo rigorous testing to ensure the facility is ready to produce medical isotopes in the near future.
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“After many years of hard work, we are extremely excited to begin testing the Medical Isotope Project facility,” said Mark de Jong, CLS director of accelerators.
“We have made tremendous progress so that we can begin the production of isotopes soon. Our goal is to produce medical isotopes safely, reliably and affordably, and we have almost reached that goal.”
The project will allow CLS to produce medical isotopes using x-rays from a particle accelerator instead of a nuclear reactor.
Around 5,500 medical scans are done daily in Canada and de Jong says two or three accelerator systems like the one at CLS could produce enough isotopes to meet demands in the country.
The news comes on the same day the Harper government announced $25 million in funding to projects in British Columbia, Alberta and Manitoba to develop new supply sources of medical isotopes.
The funding will support the development and application of cyclotron and linear accelerator production technologies.
CLS received $12 million from the federal and provincial governments in 2011 for the medical isotope project.
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