Natural Resources committee  Thank you. That's an excellent question. There are philosophers of technology and science who will say that any true substitution for basic logistics takes generations, because those of us who grew up with one technology have to retire out of the workforce. I mean, retiring a steam engine in the coal-fired power plants certainly takes time.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you. Certainly there is a network of PET isotope generators and cyclotron centres in the U.S. That is a robust network and it does supply a lot of the clinical demand. What we envision...and this is part of a national discussion. TRIUMF had 16 major medical centres attend a conference in October 2007, where we actually discussed this topic of how you could put up a national network to coordinate development of isotopes, to share the clinical expertise, and to provide a coordinated clinical trials platform for new products.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you. That's an excellent question. There are actually a couple of topics there. First of all, TRIUMF has licensed its cyclotron technology to a company in Richmond, British Columbia, known as Advanced Cyclotron Systems Inc. I'm not an expert on their business negotiations, but I believe they're in the process of selling a TRIUMF-designed cyclotron to Thunder Bay.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you for the question. It's quite apropos. The quantities of uranium used to produce isotopes are quite small. We're talking about very small quantities. The natural uranium can be sourced from anywhere around the world; I pointed to Saskatchewan as one of Canada's repositories.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you for the opportunity to be here, Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the committee. I want to compliment you on the organization of these panels. The first panel focused on emergency response and first aid. As witnesses, we're looking a little bit further down the road.