Doe Pulls Plug On Brain Cancer Center

U.S. Department of Energy officials have stopped an Idaho Falls physician’s attempt to establish a brain cancer treatment center at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.

On Tuesday they began composing a letter to Dr. Francis F. Paul, terminating the lease he has held since 1994 on the INEEL’s Power Burst Facility reactor.

“There won’t be a second chance,” Energy Department spokesman Brad Bugger said. “We will notify him that his lease is being terminated.”

Paul planned to convert the reactor to house the Idaho Brain Tumor Center. He hoped to have physicians there treat at least 9,000 patients each year for a type of brain cancer called glioblastoma multiforme.

Neutrons from the specialized reactor would have been used to destroy tumors using a technique called boron neutron capture therapy. It already is used on a limited basis in the United States, Japan and Europe.

Bugger said the decision to end Paul’s lease was made because the doctor missed a key deadline. Energy Department officials had given him until Monday to meet several conditions. They included providing an audited balance sheet on the brain tumor center and names and backgrounds of the project’s investors.

The department also had required Paul to submit a status report on his efforts to obtain a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission license and to meet other environmental and regulatory obligations.

The Power Burst Facility reactor was opened in 1972, primarily to test nuclear fuel and cladding materials. Paul had told the Energy Department he planned to move his operation into the reactor last July, but he has not.

Bugger said every day the reactor remains in standby costs the agency money.

“So they had to make a decision as to whether Dr. Paul was capable of doing what he said he wants to do. If not, it doesn’t make sense for us to keep that facility in standby condition.”

The move comes as Paul faces several legal and professional challenges.

In August, eastern Idaho’s Regional Economic Alliance twice denied his request for $3 million of the $30 million needed to convert the reactor. The alliance distributes money the Energy Department is giving Idaho under terms of Gov. Phil Batt’s 1995 nuclear waste deal.

Last March, the Idaho State Board of Medicine revoked his Idaho medical license. It concluded he had provided inadequate attention and treatment to some patients. A district judge rejected Paul’s request to block the license revocation, said Darlene Thorsted, the Board of Medicine’s executive director. Paul has appealed the revocation.

In October 1996, Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center’s board of trustees revoked Paul’s medical staff privileges, barring him from practicing medicine or performing surgery there. Paul sued the Idaho Falls hospital.