By Jim Green
The September 3 announcement of a decision to build a new reactor at Lucas Heights, in southern Sydney, was accompanied by a lot of rhetoric about "saving lives with nuclear medicine". However, cracks are beginning to appear in the rhetoric about medical isotope supply.
The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation's (ANSTO) misrepresentation of the US nuclear scientist Dr Manuel Lagunas-Solar, first revealed in Green Left Weekly two weeks ago, was taken up in the Sydney Morning Herald on September 24.
Lagunas-Solar believes cyclotrons can be used to produce technetium-99m (Tc-99m), the most commonly used medical radioisotope, instead of reactors. The cyclotron method would be safer and produce far less radioactive waste.
Some time ago, Lagunas-Solar dragged a couple of paragraphs out of a 1993 article and plonked them on the University of California internet site to give web-surfers a rough idea of the interests of his research team.
ANSTO has selectively quoted from the site to support its argument that the cyclotron technique is not viable. Liberal Senator Christopher Ellison also used the truncated, misleading quotation from the internet site in Parliament on September 4.
Lagunas-Solar is, understandably, angry and has expressed his concerns in a letter to the prime minister and science minister Peter McGauran.
Paul Cleary in the Sydney Morning Herald reported that McGauran says the Lagunas-Solar quote is included in ANSTO's information document as "an interesting footnote" because it indicated that Lagunas-Solar has changed his mind on the cyclotron technique. Lagunas-Solar has done no such thing.
There are technical problems to be resolved before cyclotrons can produce Tc-99m on a commercial scale, as Lagunas-Solar acknowledges. Small wonder. Funding for this line of research has been a pittance in comparison with funding for reactor methods. ANSTO has terminated its very modest research project into cyclotron production of Tc-99m.
This vital research should be re-initiated immediately, by government direction if necessary, and given high priority.
There are a number of other contestable claims, discussed in GLW #290, which have yet to be answered by ANSTO or McGauran. These relate to the potential to import radioisotopes and also spallation sources, which, like cyclotrons, are safer and cleaner than reactors.
An article in the Australian Financial Review on September 24 also criticised the reactor proposal. Journalist Peter Fries questioned the logic of spending $300-500 million on a reactor to supply a radioisotope market of $20 million annually.
Fries also questions a study commissioned by ANSTO which said that ANSTO's programs provide economic benefits of $140-230 million each year. Those figures make no allowance for waste management costs, decommissioning costs, or even ANSTO's annual operating budget of about $91 million, according to the Financial Review.
The Financial Review asked McGauran if he would support the construction of a reactor in his own electorate. "That's a hypothetical question", he replied.
The case for a new reactor was given short shrift in an article by Professor Barry Allen from the Department of Pharmacy, University of Sydney. This article appears in the latest edition of the science journal Search, which also carries an unimpressed article by science journalist Peter Pockley.
Allen argues that the proposed new reactor is a step into the past and may well be the last of its kind ever built. He notes that anticipated developments in functional magnetic resonance imaging may well reduce the future applications of reactor-based nuclear medicine. Allen goes on to say, "Certainly the $300 million new reactor will have little impact on cancer prognosis, the major killer of Australians today".
The "saving lives with nuclear medicine" rhetoric boils down to misinformation and fear-mongering. The cynicism is breath-taking in the context of the government's slash-and-burn approach to funding for health care, ATSIC, public housing, job training programs and the rest.
The government should use a proportion of the $300 million set aside for the reactor to fund a major R&D program into cyclotrons, spallation sources and other such technologies which are safer than reactors, produce far less radioactive waste and cannot be used in nuclear weapons programs.
Perhaps the clean, safe alternatives will be able completely to replace reactor technology by the time HIFAR is shut down early in the next century. If not, radioisotopes can be imported as an interim strategy.
ANSTO could play a major role in the development of alternative technologies. It already has expertise in cyclotron technology. ANSTO is also well placed to develop spallation sources. Cyclotrons and spallation sources have uses in both medicine and scientific research.
These alternative technologies would solve the radioactive waste problems (or at least not perpetuate them). There would be no need for staff redundancies.
The local community, including critics of the reactor proposal, would welcome the transformation of ANSTO into a forward-looking research centre rather than a relic of an era when the costs of nuclear power were hidden and the nuclear weapons option was being seriously considered by the Menzies government.
As the fear-mongering about "saving lives with nuclear medicine" crumbles, expect to hear more about the wonders of neutron science, in particular, the wonderful environmental research that will be carried out using the new reactor.
The difficulty for the government — and no doubt this is one reason the science aspect has been downplayed — is that scientists are ambivalent about the reactor proposal.
The $300 million price tag will fund only a basic reactor, bereft of a number of research instruments the scientists want. The Australian Academy of Science has declined to lend its support until details of the reactor's specifications and instrumentation have been released.
A former head of the CSIRO said in 1993 that more productive scientific research could be conducted for the cost of a reactor, and the current CSIRO head has declined to comment on the proposed reactor.