Author's note: This post will be my personal perspective. I will attempt to be as factual as possible
however, since this is a developing situation, all information is subject to change.
According to published reports, the world is going to run out of the base material for most medical isotopes by July of this year. There has been a breakdown of the Chalk River medical isotope material reactor. It is a 52 year old reactor that was supposed to be shut down in the year 2000 and replaced by 2 new nuclear reactors so Chalk River could be decommissioned. The new reactors were given the names Maple 1 & Maple 2. They would have been coming on line by now if things went according to plans made by the then Liberal government. However, that all changed with the election of the Conservative party in 2006. The new government decided to shelve Maple 1 & 2 due to cost overruns and certification requirements. They then told the regulatory body (A.E.C.L. - Atomic Energy Canada Limited) running Chalk River to baby the current reactor in an attempt to keep it going for another couple of years. Last year, the reactor started getting cranky and they had to shut it down for a couple of months causing the first worldwide shortage of medical isotope material. More on that later. They managed to get the reactor back online after the Government of Canada forced the Nuclear Regulatory Safety Commission and A.E.C.L. to restart it before repairs or retrofit were completed. This required an act of Parliament. Parliament did this because it didn't look very good for one of the largest suppliers of medical radioactive material to not have a working reactor. Canada provides 50% of the world supply of material and the world supply of isotopes will not be replenished until we can get a medical/research reactor online. The most conservative estimate to get the 52 year old reactor up and running is 3 months however that assessment is highly flexible. They are still having problems finding a cooling line leak among other problems.
But that is only the beginning. The base material from Canada is shipped internationally to many companies and government institutions to be converted into medical isotopes.
Now, moving on to what a medical isotope is. Is is used as a disease detection marker. The most obvious examples are several different types of cancer detection tests, lung scans and an alternative to the cat scan die (luminescent die) as some people are allergic to the die but not to another type of isotope. The list of procedures where isotopes are used is an extensive one. The particular isotopes used have a very short shelf life.
How will this affect all of us? For any of the procedures I have mentioned, that test will not be able to be done or done with an alternative method that is less accurate in in a lot of cases, much more difficult to perform. Depending of the type of test the doctor wants done, there will be a lot of people put at risk, especially cancer patients.
Now the liability argument. Canada is under international contract to supply this radioactive material. The very least that could happen is that all of our customers turn around and sue us for breach of contract. At the very worst, civil suits might be filed due to the death of patients that did not receive proper treatment and care because isotopes were not available to run much needed tests. As well, there will be massive diplomatic fallout due to the lack of the material. In rare circumstances, criminal proceedings could be brought against institutions and companies. I've never heard of this happening before but even the political party in charge could be sued. For the record, since I am not a lawyer, I don't know if any of these scenarios could happen except for the standard civil suit.
I think this situation should be getting much more national and international attention than the current fiasco over E.I. reform, which for my international audience stands for employment insurance (for unemployment). This is a subject you could fight over in an election instead of the usual petty bickering that has been happening over the last 3 years. After all, millions of peoples lives could be at risk and thousands could die.