Bruce Power's Unit 7 reactor on Lake Huron has become the world's first commercial nuclear facility to breed a cancer-fighting isotope called lutetium-177 while still pushing power onto the grid at full capacity. The 40-year-old CANDU reactor splits uranium to generate electricity, but the same neutrons are now being harnessed to create a targeted therapy for prostate cancer and neuroendocrine tumors, a dual-purpose approach that challenges the conventional view of what nuclear plants can do.

How Does a Power Reactor Produce Medical Isotopes?

The technology enabling this dual function is called the Isotope Production System, or IPS, designed and built by Isogen, a joint venture between Kinectrics and Framatome. The process works by loading targets made of ytterbium-176 into the reactor core, where the neutron flux slowly converts that material into lutetium-177. The reactor never stops making electricity to do it.

• Neutron Conversion: The same neutrons that split uranium atoms are redirected to transform ytterbium-176 into the medical isotope lutetium-177 without interrupting power generation.
• Continuous Supply: Unlike research reactors that operate intermittently, Bruce Power runs Unit 7 around the clock, creating a steady, predictable stream of isotope for medical use.
• Time-Critical Delivery: Lutetium-177 has a half-life of about 6.65 days, meaning it begins decaying immediately after production, making proximity to the reactor and fast processing critical for effectiveness.

Why Is Speed So Critical for This Cancer Drug?

The isotope's short half-life creates an unusual supply chain challenge. From the moment lutetium-177 leaves the reactor, the clock starts running. Every mile traveled and every day that passes eats into what remains of the material before it decays into something that no longer works as a drug. This constraint has historically forced medical isotope producers to rely on a small, aging fleet of research reactors, and when one goes down for maintenance, the supply gets tight fast.

To address this bottleneck, Bruce Power and Kinectrics built a shielded facility called a hot cell, where operators work behind heavy shielding using mechanical arms that mirror their hands. This enclosure was built at Kinectrics in Etobicoke and shipped to the Bruce site in early 2026, with testing running through spring ahead of commissioning. Once operational, the job of extracting the lutetium from its target happens on site instead of at a separate facility, shaving critical time off the supply chain.

It is important to note that Bruce Power is not making finished cancer drugs on the shores of Lake Huron. The ampule still gets packaged and shipped to ITM in Munich, Germany, where it is processed into pharmaceutical-grade material. What the hot cell does is pull one more step home and compress a timeline where time is literally the product decaying.

What Regulatory Approval Is Needed?

Right now, in July 2026, Bruce Power's request for expanded isotope production is sitting in front of Canada's nuclear regulator. The company has applied to change its licensed lutetium-177 production process so it can operate the hot cell at a maintenance facility on the Bruce site under its existing reactor operating licence. In regulatory terms, the company wants formal permission to do the target-carrier removal work on site rather than off it, and it asked the Commission to reach a decision quickly to support the program.

"Cancer-fighting medical isotopes to the global market sooner," stated James Scongack, Chief Operating Officer at Bruce Power.

James Scongack, Chief Operating Officer at Bruce Power

The written hearing pulled in submissions from the usual cast plus one telling addition. Alongside Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission staff and Kinectrics, the regulator received input from Brightshores Health System, a hospital network. When a healthcare provider files paperwork in a nuclear licensing hearing, it signals that the people on the receiving end of these isotopes are paying attention to how reliably the supply flows.

What Is the Broader Investment Behind This Program?

The push is not happening in a vacuum, and the dollar figures around it have gotten serious over the past year. 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.

Then, in February 2026, the province stepped in with something bigger. Ontario provided a provincial guarantee, through its Indigenous Opportunities Financing Program, to support a $250 million investment expanding the isotope partnership between Bruce Power and the Saugeen Ojibway Nation. The province called it 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. The market gives them a reason to try. 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.

How Does This Fit Into the Broader Nuclear Landscape?

The noise in nuclear right now mostly goes to new machines. Small modular reactors on conference slides, massive basemat installations at new sites, the endless pitch that the next reactor is a couple of years out. Bruce Power is chasing new build too, and it is running a $13 billion program to refurbish its existing reactors and keep them alive into the 2060s.

But the isotope story is a reminder that the reactors already standing can do things the slide decks rarely mention. The CANDU design that has powered Ontario for half a century turns out to be a workable neutron source for growing a cancer isotope, and the same hardware that keeps the lights on can simultaneously serve the medical supply chain. This dual-use approach suggests that maximizing the value of existing nuclear infrastructure may be just as important as building new capacity in the years ahead.