TORONTO - Ontario may provide the answer to a U.S. shortage of a key compound needed for new technology that can detect smuggled nuclear bombs.
The American government has reportedly stopped deploying the new detectors at ports around the world because it's run out of helium 3.
Ontario's CANDU reactors make the substance that helium 3 comes from, but it's not currently separated.
Ontario Power Generation, a utility owned by the provincial government, has talked to U.S. officials about whether it could supply them with helium 3, Energy and Infrastructure Minister Gerry Phillips said Monday.
"But I understand it's just at the discussion stage, no decisions have been made on it," he said. "That's as much as I know about it."
OPG is trying to figure out whether it can extract helium 3 and what it might cost, said spokesman Ted Gruetzner.
"Those are all the things that we don't know," he said.
"Right now, it's really at the very preliminary stage and that would be part of the process that we will go through to decide whether we want to do it - how much it would cost versus how much it would presumably sell for."
Helium 3 comes from tritium - an ingredient in hydrogen bombs - which OPG extracts from heavy water used in its nuclear reactors.
The water picks up tritium during the CANDU process, which is separated from the water at OPG's tritium-removal facility in Darlington, he said. Much of the tritium is stored safely on site while the water goes back into the reactor.
Ontario has four CANDU reactors currently operating at Darlington station near Clarington, six at its Pickering station east of Toronto and six others in Kincardine, Ont., leased to Bruce Power LP - all of which produce the so-called "triated" water, he said.
But only OPG is capable of processing the water, because Bruce Power doesn't have a tritium-removal facility, Gruetzner said.
New Brunswick and Quebec also have CANDU reactors, but Gruetzner said he's not sure if they extract tritium from their heavy water.
Last week, an official from the Department of Homeland Security testified before a U.S. House committee that the demand for helium 3 exceeds the supply by a ratio of 10 to one.
Representative Brad Miller, the committee's chairman, wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano last week, saying the department received "plenty of signs in the past year that the lack of helium 3 could be a show-stopper" for the new detection machines.
Miller also urged Napolitano to abandon the program, which he said could cost US$2 billion.
"This may be an opportunity for the department to use the helium 3 crisis as an off-ramp for this troubled program," he wrote in the Nov. 20 letter.
The New York Times reported Sunday that the Department of Homeland Security spent $230 million to develop the new detectors, but had to stop deploying them due to the shortage.
The machines are supposed to detect plutonium or uranium in shipping containers. The U.S. government wanted 1,300 to 1,400 machines, which cost US$800,000 each, for use in ports around the world to thwart terrorists, the Times reported.
