Solving Nuclear Problems

Canada may be on the verge of solving Iran's problems. Iran, it should be recalled, insists that it must and it will continue with its enrichment of uranium. This is represented as domestic policy, requiring that it apply itself to the nuclear option simply because of civic necessity. It plans to produce its own radio isotopes for medical diagnostic purposes. How wrong can the international community possibly be?

The West has irremediably and unjustly slurred this noble nation's aspirations. Nuclear for peaceful means because Iran has only thoughts of peace and good fellowship among humankind's offspring. It is not, truth to tell - and Iran tells truth unlike what any other administration has ever done (comparable, actually to the belligerent, self-excusing hyperbole that emanates from North Korea) - that it is not the least little bit interested in owning its own deterrent-only nuclear warheads.

Heaven forfend. Even the International Atomic Energy Agency has it wrong, all wrong, insultingly wrong in stating that it is their informed, scientific opinion that some of Iran's experiments could not possibly have any purpose other than for the development of nuclear weapons. What do they know, after all?

Well, here are Canadian scientists at the ready to solve that little problem. They announced their successful transformation of molybdenum-100, a naturally occurring compound mined in various parts of the world into technetium-99m by exposing it within cyclotrons to beams of energy that stripped off subatomic particles to produce technetium-99m from molybdenum-100.

A pioneer in nuclear medicine, and having the responsibility of supplying much of the international community's needed medical isotopes, the reactors meant to replace the tired old sputtering Chalk River reactors, saw some costly problems with the new MAPLE reactors that were haunted by technical problems.

Get the picture? Canada need no longer fret over the state of its nuclear reactors used to produce medical isotopes at Chalk River, a site that has given us too many technical headaches and proven too excessively costly and undependable. Even the Netherlands, the world's other major producer of medical isotopes, should grasp at the opportunity to produce radioactive medicine without reactors.

The nuclear scientists, led by the TRIUMF nuclear lab at the University of British Columbia, has produced the technetium-99m in Ontario and B.C., the scientists trium[f]antly declaring the process as a "major milestone" solving global problems in the critical shortage of the important medically diagnostic isotopes.

Dr. Francois Benard of the B.C. Cancer Agency informed a news conference at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science: "We have found a practical, simple solution that can use existing infrastructure." The federal government gave Canada's nuclear medicine brain trust $35-million in a challenge to produce the isotope without the use of a reactor or weapons-grade uranium.

And isn't it wonderful that scientists the world over, irrespective of ideology, politics, culture and governments are more than willing to share new scientific discoveries with one another to advance the well-being of humankind? Knocking out the propaganda prop of justifying enriched uranium processes for the production of medical isotopes is a start in the right direction.

Now we just have to convince Iran to think about all the research funding it will save, setting aside its nuclear ambitions.