NB Power to explore medical isotope production at Point Lepreau

NB Power offered a rare glimpse inside the Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station.

The Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station could soon be providing more than just power to New Brunswickers.

During a rare tour for the media Thursday, NB Power executives detailed their plans to explore the possibility of producing radioisotopes on site. The most common use for radioisotopes is in the medical field, including diagnosis and imaging, cancer treatments and sterilizing medical equipment.

NB Power president and CEO Lori Clark says Canada is a global leader in isotope production both for medical and industrial use. Point Lepreau is the only facility in Canada that would be able to produce the resource outside of Ontario.

“It’s really early days, but we’re very optimistic that there is a revenue stream that will come back to New Brunswickers and to our customers and help to offset some of the rate pressure that we know is coming,” says Clark when asked how much the production of isotopes would make for the utility.

“It would depend on the technical evaluation and the business partners that we work with, but we do know that based on the experience in other utilities, it could be tens of millions of dollars annually.”

In order to push production, the station would have to make some slight changes to its CANDU 6 reactor. The plant would still be able to operate while changes are made, and the style and production method would be similar to places in Ontario.

NB Power has created an “isotope team” made up of existing staff to develop a plan and strategy to implement production and what benefits it will have. An overall cost to retrofit the plant for isotope production was not made clear Thursday.

“Medical isotopes save lives,” says Point Lepreau site vice-president and chief nuclear officer Steve Bagshaw. “Most everyone knows a family member or friend that has been touched by cancer. Pursuing medical isotope harvesting at Point Lepreau to support lifesaving treatments is a significant opportunity for Canadians and for global health care while also offering potential revenue and economic benefits for New Brunswick.”

While the prospect of harvesting isotopes to benefit the millions of medical procedures they are used for, there are questions on the timing.

In recent years Point Lepreau has seen lengthy shutdowns. The most recent shutdown ended on Dec. 15, two weeks later than planned after a scheduled five-month outage.

Other outages were not planned, with the replacement of parts resulting in long recent shutdowns.

When Point Lepreau is offline, it costs the utility $1 million-to-$1.5 million a day because the utility must find and pay for replacement power and repairs to the nuclear plant. The station was only operating 27 per cent of the time during the 2024-25 fiscal year.

When asked if the utility should focus on ensuring the station is running smoothly rather than focus on a new type of production, Clark says investments have been made recently to ensure more reliable and stable production.

“That’s the foundation for making medical isotopes, you have to have stable production from the facility,” says Clark. “This is an opportunity now that we have that stable production and sustainable production from the facility to look at what else can we do to help manage the cost increases that we see coming as a utility and the rate increases that we see coming.

“This is a new revenue stream that will help offset some of that pressure on rates, and it’s a really good news story for New Brunswickers.”

Any modifications or infrastructure installations to support the new plan would occur during scheduled outages.

The next outage at Point Lepreau is slated for 119 days beginning in April.

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