VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Jun 9, 2013) - Wai Young, Member of Parliament for Vancouver South, on behalf of the Honourable Joe Oliver, Canada's Minister of Natural Resources, today highlighted the Harper Government's contribution to an important milestone achieved by TRIUMF, Canada's national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics. MP Young participated in the announcement of a significant achievement in their work to produce medical isotopes using cyclotron technology.
TRIUMF announced today that it has successfully scaled up its technology to produce enough quantities of the key isotope, technetium-99m (Tc-99m), to supply an urban area the size of Vancouver.
"Today's milestone demonstrates the positive, tangible results being achieved by our government's investments in jobs and science," said MP Young. "Our contributions are supporting jobs and helping advance new technologies for the production of the key medical isotope, Tc-99m."
The Harper Government is providing funding of $7 million to TRIUMF through the Isotope Technology Acceleration Program (ITAP). This four-year, $25-million program is also funding projects led by the University of Alberta and the Prairie Isotope Production Enterprise. The objectives of ITAP are to improve the security of supply of medical isotopes for Canadians, reduce radioactive waste and meet nuclear non-proliferation goals through the development and application of cyclotron and linear accelerator production technologies.
Our government is supporting collaboration among academic, private and public sector partners in the work needed to attract private sector interest and to help ensure that isotope production is reliable and on a sound commercial footing.
The following media backgrounder is available at www.nrcan.gc.ca/media:
Isotope Technology Acceleration Program
NRCan's news releases and backgrounders are available at www.nrcan.gc.ca/media
Follow us on Twitter: @NRCan (http://twitter.com/nrcan)