December 7, 2007--Repairs at the facility in Chalk River, Ontario, have choked off the global supply of radioactive isotopes used for diagnosing and treating thousands of patients. On Nov. 18, the reactor was taken off line to repair the electrical system; it was supposed to restart on Nov. 23, but is still shut down.

"There is only one reactor on the North American continent that actually supplies most of these agents," Dr. Christopher O'Brien, president of the Ontario Association of Nuclear Medicine, told the Toronto Star, referring to the facility in Chalk River.

The problem is, these radioactive agents have a shelf life from two weeks to only six hours. "You can't stockpile it," said O'Brien. "Basically what we are doing now in Ontario is rationalizing services or not offering them."

Dr. Sandy McEwan, chair of Edmonton's Cross Cancer Institute and president of the U.S.-based Society of Nuclear Medicine, says that Canada supplies more than two-thirds of the global market for radioactive isotopes.

Remember when the DOE decided to shut down the Hanford Fast Flux Test Facility in Washington State in 2005, and all the idiots, in opposition to LPAC's campaign to keep the Facility open, said we did not need the life-saving isotopes it produced?