Speaker:  Ian Trevena 
Vice-President, Isotope Products of MDS Nordion Inc.
Topic:  Production of Reactor Isotopes for Nuclear Medicine 
Location:  J.L. Gray Centre 
Deep River, Ont. 
Date:  Thurs. January 16, 1997
 

Summary published in North Renfrew Times, Jan 22, 1997:

Production of Reactor Isotopes for Nuclear Medicine

by Al Rose
 

 
Dr. Ian Trevena, Vice-President, Isotope Products of MDS Nordion Inc., spoke last Thursday to a full house at the Bennett Room of the J.L. Gray Centre on the subject of Production of Reactor Isotopes for Nuclear Medicine.
 
Questions from the floor indicated that many in the audience were more interested in the political and regulatory aspects of the Maple reactor project than in the technical end.  Trevena skirted these questions, indicating that things like low level waste disposal at CRL, possible delays caused by the environmental assessment requirements and what appears on the surface as an extremely optimistic schedule for construction were matters which AECL and the federal government were responsible for.  He felt that the importance of nuclear medicine would undoubtedly be a strong consideration in resolving all these issues.  He did admit that significant delays in construction of the first Maple or problems with NRU before Maple was ready would create significant difficulties and expense in finding alternative sources to fill the gap.
 
Trevena dealt mostly with ground fairly familiar to most of the audience.  He reviewed the history from its founding in 1946 by Roy Erington as the Radiochemical Co. to its fiftieth anniversary this year as a part of the MDS group, now entitled MDS Nordion.  In 1978 Nordion began production at TRIUMPH followed by operations in Vancouver in 1982.  The Kanata facility dates from 1983 and the break with AECL came in 1988.  By 1989 Nordion had facilities in Belgium and a sales office in Hong Kong.  The company employs 600 people, 150 of which are in Belgium.
 
The building of the Maple reactors will cause a significant increase in the price of isotopes to customers but Trevena said that they accept this because there is really no other supplier.  Although other countries like the US and Russia have some capability to produce, the infrastructure required to deliver the product is extremely complicated and delivery scheduling critical to the customer.  At this time, only MDS Nordion has this infrastructure.  He also noted that competing production reactors were, like NRU, not of recent vintage.
 
Trevena then reviewed the isotopes now on the market and some new ones under development for those interested in the more technical aspects of nuclear medicine.  He also repeated the now familiar statistics of 15 to 20 million nuclear diagnostic procedures per year world wide.  Roughly one third of all patients receive some form of isotope diagnosis or treatment, 36,000 daily in the US and 50,000 daily world wide.
 
In closing, Trevena was confident that the two Maple reactors would be brought into production in 1999 and 2000 as scheduled and that MDS Nordion would be in a position to retain most of the world market for the next twenty years.