Those of you that know me know that I spent the early part of my career as a Radiation Therapist, and spent hours upon hours tending to patients bravely battling through their journey with cancer. Many people have of course gone through this with family and friends as well, and know exactly what I’m talking about. It is a very unique affliction, common to far too many people, and I believe it is a meaningful gesture for people to make time in their lives to recognize the impact this has on so many.

For this reason, I am grateful and proud to be a part of the CNA’s first Relay for Life team. As a tight-knit group of colleagues and friends, we’ll be walking all night as Team WalkNUclear on June 7th from 7pm-7am at Walter Baker Park in Ottawa.

Our connection with the Canadian Cancer Society highlights the role of nuclear research in providing advanced diagnostic and treatment options for optimizing cancer management. As someone who has directly used the tools provided by this research, and seen its patient impact first-hand, I am tremendously thankful to everyone who supports causes like Relay for Life and ensures we continue finding better ways to help people through an otherwise very difficult part of their life.

So thank you to the CNA for letting my job support a cause I believe in, and thank you to everyone who donates or gets involved otherwise.

You can donate to Team WalkNUclear here, if you feel so inclined.

Happy fundraising everyone!

-AW

I appeared before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development last week to talk about a side of the nuclear industry that many people don’t know about. We’re doing our part not only to protect, but also to improve wildlife habitat.

I welcomed the opportunity to provide three good examples: AECL’s work with chimney swifts, OPG’s attention to northern redbelly dace at its Darlington generating station, and Cameco’s initiative to further our knowledge about the boreal woodland caribou in northern Saskatchewan.

Chimney swift

AECL came across the chimney swifts’ housing issue as it was planning to decommission a stack that hadn’t been used in 25 years. Swifts like stacks, but as companies innovate and heating systems change, stacks are disappearing. This habitat loss is threatening the species.

AECL sought out a chimney swift specialist at Trent University and launched a research program to find out more about the species, and what could be done if the stacks were torn down. The knowledge they gained will not only help them understand the species, it will also provide solid information for making decisions about the maintenance, or decommissioning of the stacks. They will also gain valuable information on how to build replacement habitat.

Northern redbelly dace

OPG, meanwhile, has been working to make life better for the northern redbelly dace, a fish the size of a minnow whose preferred waters are calm and clean. Those aren’t qualities you’d normally associate with a construction waste landfill. Recognizing the opportunity to enhance the environment, OPG developed the pond in a way that gave the dace a new home.

Woodland caribou

And then there’s Cameco’s work to help us to understand woodland caribou, which moved onto the threatened species list a decade ago. The federal government’s recovery strategy, published last year, brought to light some significant gaps in what we know about the species. Cameco stepped up and developed a woodland caribou monitoring program in northern Saskatchewan, and sponsored a larger provincial research initiative.

These three projects demonstrate our industry’s commitment to environmental protection, our experience in environmental restoration and our willingness to enter into partnerships in carrying out such projects. They also demonstrate how we need to find new opportunities for partnerships and projects to offset environmental effects.

A few weeks later, we were thrilled to discover that two of our members, Cuttler & Associates Inc. and Promation Engineering Ltd. had made additional donations to the Canadian Cancer Society through this campaign! Thanks to their enthusiasm, we raised an additional $480! All of us at the CNA extend a big heartfelt THANK YOU to these two generous members.

Remember, this is just the first of many ways to get involved in CNA-Canadian Cancer Society campaigns. On June 7, we will be hosting our inaugural Relay for Life event here in Ottawa.

To find out more or join our team, visit www.cna.ca/fightcancer.

That’s why this year, we wanted to recognize the value we receive from delegate feedback, and we are proud to announce that two of our 2013 delegates are the lucky winners of our CNA Conference Feedback Prize Draw!

Rae Watson from Mirion Technologies Inc. is the winner of a $250 VISA gift card, and Diana Jahn from the University of Saskatchewan is the winner of a $50 Chapters gift card!

Thanks to everyone for filling out our feedback forms. We received over 200 complete feedback surveys in total – almost double our previous best. I guess that means you can all look forward to a well-informed program in 2014!

Thanks again, and see you before you know it at #CNA2014!

This is an excellent course for anyone to take – regardless of level of technical background. I’m a radiobiologist by trade, so certain things I obviously already knew, but I learned a lot about the history of nuclear in Canada and the engineering considerations involved in the fuel cycle. And it’s all delivered at a level for the layperson to understand.

I had a great time at this course, and it delivered exceptional value for the money and time spent. If you’re not able to make it to next week’s session, I highly recommend you stay posted on future events. A little knowledge goes a long way.

For more information, visit http://www.cns-snc.ca/events/nuclear-101-2013-05

Gideon Forman, their executive director, apparently told health authorities in Haliburton region that kids living near nuclear energy facilities face higher risks of leukemia.  Forman, who is not a medical doctor, cited the widely discredited German study Kinderkrebs in der umgebung von Kernkraftwerken (KiKK), published in 2008. (The title translates to “Childhood Cancer in the Environment of Nuclear Power Plants.”)

Here’s the problem. It’s just not true.

In fact, several follow-up studies have reviewed the KiKK work. Every one of them concluded that the kids’ leukemia risk could NOT be blamed on the nearby nuclear energy facility.

Even CAPE acknowledges in its own literature that the German study proved nothing: “The authors state that the reason for the elevated risk is unexplained, as the levels of radioactive emissions from these facilities are considered too low to explain the increase in childhood leukemia.” (Source:  Cathy Vakil and Linda Harvey, Human Health Implications of the Nuclear Energy Industry, p. 62)

As the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission said in its review of the KiKK studies, “any claims of a link between childhood leukemia and radiation from nuclear power plants are unfounded and not supported by a wealth of evidence resulting from multiple epidemiology studies.”

And as the commission chairman, Dr. Michael Binder, wrote last August in a letter to the Hamilton Spectator  specifically rebutting CAPE’s allegations, “The truth is that studies have shown over and over that people living near nuclear power plants are as healthy as the rest of the population.”

Forman also cited scientific studies to show that “all reactors release radioactive material routinely” but failed completely to put this into perspective.  The truth is that nuclear energy facilities generally add less than 0.1% to the background radiation that occurs naturally.

In fact, Canadians receive over 100 times more radiation dose naturally through the food we eat than from Canada’s nuclear energy facilities.

Those are the facts. Shouldn’t doctors deal in facts rather than fiction?

What happens when you bring together nuclear regulators from 50 countries for a week-long conference in Ottawa? An approach to regulatory oversight that is impressively consistent and rigorous, including in how they responded to the events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

I was very impressed by how thorough the regulators were in their response to Fukushima. Clearly they have been sharing a lot of information, the same way that the nuclear industry has been sharing our lessons learned from Fukushima.

Since the tsunami struck Japan two years ago, the nuclear industry has been working to ensure that safety standards and policies reflect current findings. Canada’s nuclear companies thoroughly assessed our own systems and operations to confirm their safety. We looked at back-up power systems and assured ourselves that our energy facilities could withstand tsunamis and other natural disasters.

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), in its Fukushima Task Force Report, shared our view that all Canadian nuclear power plants are safe, and designed to withstand Fukushima-like conditions. Interestingly, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) concluded that CNSC’s Fukushima response was prompt, robust and comprehensive, and an example for other regulatory bodies.

I hadn’t realized until this conference just how closely our regulators work together. I was encouraged to see that regulators from countries with lengthy nuclear experience are more than willing to help countries with newer nuclear programs to develop their own effective regulatory frameworks.  I was also pleased to hear from other regulators that the CNSC is widely recognized as “one of the top regulators in the world”.

The nuclear energy industry is an international community. We all feel the impact of events at other facilities, and we all share the same desire to make our industry safer.

The more we can share and communicate, the better we will be.

Nuclear medicine is one of the most powerful analytical tools available to physicians and patients today because of its ability to provide dynamic views of organ structure and function. Medical isotopes are used to diagnose potentially life-threatening conditions such as heart disease and to treat serious diseases such as cancer.

About one million nuclear medicine procedures are performed in Canada annually. In the U.S., there are some 18 million nuclear medicine procedures per year among 311 million people, and in Europe about 10 million among 500 million people. Canada has been one of the global leaders in the supply of medical isotopes to the world’s medical community. Tc-99m is used in about 80% of all diagnostic nuclear imaging procedures.

Medical isotopes have a short shelf life and therefore cannot be inventoried. Before they can be used in patient procedures, the materials used in nuclear medicine are developed through a multi-step supply chain process.

This graphic summarizes the process.

Watch this video to understand how medical isotopes make their complex (but necessarily quick) journey, from reactor to patient:

You can watch more CNAconf2013 conference videos on the playlist we created. Other videos including videos from previous conference years can be found on our YouTube channel.

Toronto is a beautiful, modern, clean, world-class city which is—sometimes unfairly—nicknamed The Big Smoke. The nickname comes from the smog that sometimes hovers over the city on hot summer days. Smog is caused in part by fossil fuel combustion, and in Toronto that means cars. Therefore the city’s biggest and most effective weapon against smog is its electric-powered subways and streetcars.

Subways and streetcars run on steel rails, and rail transportation is far more efficient, in terms of fuel used per kilometer traveled, than road transportation. And electric-powered rail is far more efficient than fossil-powered. If the electricity comes from mostly zero-carbon sources, as it does in Ontario, then electric rail transit is, on a passenger-by-passenger basis, twenty to eighty times as clean as car transportation.

In 2010, the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) used 4.4 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity to move millions of passengers on electric subways and streetcars. Most of those 4.4 billion kWh came from Ontario’s three nuclear power plants. Because most of that electricity came from nuclear plants, each individual subway or streetcar rider’s carbon footprint was tiny: nuclear emits no smog or greenhouse gas pollution.

And because Toronto’s subways and streetcars are mostly nuclear powered, TTC fares were low—nuclear is among the least expensive types of electricity in Ontario.

Nuclear energy is affordable because it is also among the most efficient and reliable ways we know to make electricity.

So I congratulate all Toronto subway and streetcar riders: every day you prove that modern transportation is affordable, reliable, and clean.