Richard Wilkes was dismayed to see only six other people at the first community engagement session on the Thunder Bay Regional Research Institute’s cyclotron project.
“It’s something that affects the community and nobody’s here,” said the Thunder Bay man, who came to the Thursday morning session with his wife Mavis.
The $4 million cyclotron will create isotopes to be used for medical imaging and research. The machine is expected to be delivered to Thunder Bay in spring 2014 and the facility is expected to employ five people at start up and could potentially grow to 10 full-time employees.
The TBRRI hosted the first of five public information sessions on the project Thursday and Wilkes said he came out to find out exactly what a cyclotron was.
“I thought it was another imaging thing and I just wanted to see what it was used for but it seems to be more important than just imaging,” he said.
Wilkes’ wife Mavis said she was glad she came out and the presentation addressed any concerns she had.
“I found it very informative and sort of relieved any anxiety I had about the radiation,” she said.
Most of the questions from meeting’s attendees were around safety issues with the transportation and handling of the radioactive material.
TBRRI director of research operations Mike Campbell said the questions he fielded were what he expected to hear.
“I’m hoping that after today people were able to get some of their questions answered. Hopefully they were able to leave with a little bit of understanding of what we’re doing,” he said.
The total cost of the project is about $10 million with $4 million from the federal government, $3.9 million from the province and $1.5 million from the City of Thunder Bay.
“We realize that’s public money and I want to make sure just from a personal standpoint that if somebody has questions that I do my best to answer that,” said Campbell.
“We’re looking at trying to develop a facility that will bring a little bit of money, support our research program, allow us to really advance our agenda of bringing better health care to patients.”
The next two public information sessions are scheduled for Aug. 7 at 10:30 a.m. and Aug. 20 at 4:30 p.m. Both will be held in the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre’s Auditorium A.
