For 80 years, Canada has been a leader in the responsible development of nuclear energy: Whitlock
RE: "Don't sing praises of enriched uranium: letter writer" (The Hill Times, Aug. 4).
I believe the letter writer is conflating high-enriched uranium (HEU) with enriched uranium in general. Canada has indeed moved on from using HEU in peaceful applications like medical isotope production and research, but we most definitely still use enriched uranium at lower levels (< 20%) that are below the IAEA threshold of direct weapons-usability.
The letter writer singles out the Canadian-designed SLOWPOKE research reactor, which ran on HEU fuel like hundreds of other (largely US-designed) research reactors built in the latter half of the 20th century, but importantly it utilized a fraction of the HEU of the US designs. This was part of an innovative Canadian effort to minimize the use of this material, in an era when its application in civilian research reactors was commonplace.
With the shutdown of the reactors at Chalk River Laboratories, Canada now imports its main nuclear medical isotope, Tc-99m, from foreign reactors that run on enriched uranium. Tc-99m is responsible for over 80% of procedures worldwide (about 40 million per year).
A recent innovation in Canada will enable the CANDU reactors at Darlington to produce this crucial radioisotope without the use of enriched uranium (due to unique features of the CANDU reactor). However, this will account for only a fraction of the potential of enriched uranium to meet the world's needs.
Canada has been a leader for 80 years in the responsible development of nuclear energy and its many applications, including the use of enriched uranium and the revolutionary medical tools that it enabled.
Dr. Jeremy J. Whitlock
Stratford, Ont.
(The writer is a nuclear consultant and former senior technical adviser at the IAEA Department of Safeguards.
Original letter to The Hill Times (2025 Aug 4) from G. Edwards:
Don't sing the praises of enriched uranium: letter writer
Re:"Enriched uranium can do good:
letter writer,"(The Hill Times, July 21).
In a recent letter, Jeremy Whitlock sings
the praises of enriched uranium and all the
good things it can do. Why, then, did the
United States feel the need to drop bunker
buster bombs on Iran in an effort to halt
their uranium enrichment program?
Whitlock says medical isotopes require
enriched uranium. But there are no medical
isotopes being produced in Canada today
using enriched uranium, even though this
country is still a leader in the field of isotope
production. Once upon a time, weapons-grade
uranium was used at Chalk River, Ont., to
produce isotopes, but those days are over. The
Obama administration hosted a global sum-
mit to eliminate the use of such dangerous
material for any civilian uses whatsoever.
For four years, truckloads of highly
radioactive liquid waste from Chalk River,
accompanied by heavily armed guards,
transported the left-over weapons-grade
uranium residues to the Savannah River
nuclear weapons facility in South Carolina.
Never again will this exercise be repeated.
In the early days, Canada used highly
enriched weapons-grade uranium as fuel
in several university research devices
called SLOWPOKE reactors. But when we
sold the technology to Jamaica, American
officials hit the panic button. Why on earth
would Canada be sending weapons-grade
uranium to another country? The practice
was stopped, and all SLOWPOKE reac-
tors had to be retrofitted to use only low
enriched uranium.
Recent studies have made it clear that
even lower levels of enriched uranium are
potentially nuclear weapons usable. It makes
sense to scotch the snake before it hatches-
perhaps these fuels should also be prohibited.
In an earlier letter published in The Hill
Times, Whitlock wrote that"Radiation is
not dangerous at the levels we routinely
encounter in our environment." Has he not
heard that radioactive gas is the main cause
of lung cancer among non-smokers? Or that
many deaths attributed to cigarette smoking
are due to radioactivity in the tobacco?
It is true that Canada produced medical
isotopes in the past using weapons-grade
uranium, and sold a reactor to Jamaica
that also used weapons grade uranium,
but both activities were halted by the U.S.
government because of the alarming
[The publication unfortunately cut the text at this point]
Gordon Edwards, PhD
President,
Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibilty
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