Bruce Power Wins Regulatory Approval to Process Cancer-Fighting Lutetium-177 On-Site
核心洞察
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) has approved Bruce Power (搜索) to operate its newly constructed on-site hot cell facility, a key milestone in lutetium-177 (Lu-177) production.
The hot cell enables Target Carrier Removal to occur on-site, streamlining the isotope supply chain, reducing transportation needs, and enhancing worker safety.
Lu-177 is a medium-energy beta emitter used in targeted radiopharmaceutical therapy for cancers such as prostate cancer (搜索) and neuroendocrine tumors (搜索), with a half-life of about 6.65 days.
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) has granted Bruce Power (搜索) approval to operate its newly constructed hot cell facility, a decision the company describes as a significant milestone in its production of cancer-fighting medical isotopes. Construction of the hot cell was completed in July, and the approval now allows Bruce Power to perform Target Carrier Removal—an important step in the lutetium-177 (Lu-177) production process—directly on-site.
"This approval represents another transformational step in Bruce Power (搜索)'s journey to improve lives through the production of cancer-fighting medical isotopes," said Bruce Power Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice-President James Scongack. "With the hot cell now licensed and approved for operations, we are strengthening Ontario's integrated isotope supply chain, increasing efficiency, and expanding our ability to deliver cancer-fighting medical isotopes to patients around the world."
Lutetium-177 and the Theranostics Approach
Lutetium-177 is a medium-energy beta emitter that can be used in targeted therapy while helping to minimise damage to surrounding, healthy tissue. It has a half-life of 6.7 days (cited elsewhere as approximately 6.65 days) and is compatible with various targeting agents, ranging from short peptides to large biomolecules. In addition to emitting beta particles, Lu-177 also emits low-energy gamma radiation, which makes it useful for theranostics—a precision medicine approach that integrates diagnostic and therapeutic methods, often using radiopharmaceuticals, to identify and treat diseases such as cancer.
The isotope goes into targeted therapies for prostate cancer (搜索) and neuroendocrine tumors (搜索), the kind of treatment designed to hunt malignant cells while leaving the healthy tissue around them mostly alone.
How the Isotope Is Produced
Lu-177 can be made either directly, by irradiation of lutetium-176, or indirectly, by irradiation of ytterbium-176 (Yb-176) to produce the short-lived intermediate radioisotope ytterbium-177, which decays to Lu-177.
Most medical radioisotopes are made in a relatively small number of research reactors around the world, but the characteristics of Canada's CANDU pressurised heavy water reactors make them particularly suited for producing medical radioisotopes as well as power generation. Bruce Power (搜索) has been producing cobalt-60—used to sterilise single-use medical devices—since 1986, and began producing medical-grade cobalt-60 for cancer treatments in 2021. In 2022, it became the first commercial nuclear operator to produce Lu-177 using an innovative Isotope Production System (IPS) installed in Bruce unit 7 to irradiate Yb-176 targets, which are then sent for processing and distribution to health care facilities.
The IPS was designed and built by Isogen (搜索), a joint venture between Kinectrics (搜索) and Framatome (搜索), and installed inside Unit 7, an 817-megawatt pressurised heavy-water reactor. The IPS loads targets made of ytterbium-176 into the reactor core, where the neutron flux inside a running reactor slowly converts that ytterbium into lutetium-177—all while the reactor continues generating electricity.
The Race Against the Clock
The logistics of Lu-177 are driven by its short half-life. From the moment the isotope comes out of the reactor, the clock is running and the material is steadily decaying into something that no longer works as a drug. Every mile and every day between the reactor and the patient eats into what is left.
Until recently, the stripping of carrier materials from irradiated targets happened at a facility off the Bruce site entirely—one more stop on the journey. The new on-site hot cell, built at Kinectrics (搜索) in Etobicoke and shipped to the Bruce site in early 2026, is a fully shielded enclosure where operators work behind heavy shielding using mechanical arms that mirror their hands, minimising radiation exposure.
Bringing the Target Carrier Removal capability on-site will further streamline isotope production, reduce transportation requirements, enhance worker safety, lower emissions, and strengthen Ontario's position as a global leader in medical isotope innovation, according to Bruce Power (搜索).
Scope of the New Capability
Bruce Power (搜索) is careful to note that the hot cell does not mean the company is suddenly making finished cancer drugs on the shores of Lake Huron. The extracted quartz ampule holding the lutetium still gets packaged and shipped to ITM (搜索) in Munich, Germany, where it is processed into the pharmaceutical-grade material that ends up in treatments. What the hot cell does is pull one more step home and shave time off a chain where time is literally the product decaying.
The new on-site hot cell facility is part of a broader isotope production expansion effort at Bruce Power (搜索), which also includes the installation of an additional IPS in Bruce unit 6. It was constructed through a Canadian collaboration involving Bruce Power, Kinectrics (搜索) and Bird Construction.
Investment and Expansion
The push is backed by significant investment. In August 2025, the federal government put $13 million behind a second Isotope Production System, this one going into Unit 6, through a program called the Canadian Medical Isotope Ecosystem. That second IPS raises long-term production capacity and keeps the lutetium flowing when Unit 7 goes offline for its scheduled major overhaul in 2028.
In February 2026, Ontario provided a provincial guarantee, through its Indigenous Opportunities Financing Program, to support a $250 million investment expanding the isotope partnership between Bruce Power (搜索) and the Saugeen Ojibway Nation (搜索)—the largest guarantee of its kind since the program began in 2009. Bruce Power operates on Saugeen Ojibway Nation territory, and revenue from the lutetium-177 program flows back into the community through a partnership the two set up years ago.
All of it points at one target the province keeps repeating: doubling Ontario's medical isotope production by 2030. More than 40 million medical procedures a year worldwide use isotopes for diagnosis or treatment, and the global market is projected to grow from roughly $13 billion to more than $45 billion a year over the coming decade, according to figures cited by The Globe and Mail.