Saskatchewan Isotope Reactor Schizophrenia

Richard Florizone is the vice-president of finance at the University of Saskatchewan and is heavily involved in the nuclear file. He thinks we should get an isotope reactor.

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The accelerators offer a good solution that could come online faster and for less cost, but they don't have the volume,” said Richard Florizone, a nuclear physicist and vice-president of finance at the University of Saskatchewan, which will partner with the province on the reactor. “Together they would offer a diversified supply, so that if one facility went down, you would have others that could back it up.”

The Saskatchewan bid is already one of the early favourites. It promises a low-enriched uranium research reactor capable of half the isotope volume of the Chalk River facility for between $500-million and $750-million.

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Sounds good, except the government's Uranium Development Partnership says this:

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Key Recommendation NN: "The economics of a standalone isotope reactor are not attractive." (Page 97 of the UDP Final Report).

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In other words one of the key recommendation of the UDP report is that a isotope reactor is not a good idea. But really, what does this UDP working group know anyway? It was chaired by some crackpot named Richard Florizone, who is a nuclear physicist and vice-president of finance at the University of Saskatchewan.

Heh.

(I'm back.)

Update: The Jurist has some good numbers that point out the lunacy of this whole argument.