Medical isotopes – The coming crisis in supplies for Technetium-99
Nov 30, 2012
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Just one nuclear reactor, at the Chalk River Laboratories in eastern Canada, is the source of around half of the global supply of technetium-99m – a short-lived radioisotope used extensively in medical scans for heart disease, bone cancer, brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s and stroke damage, and other life-threatening conditions. But the aging Chalk River reactor has been shut down twice in recent years after safety violations and a radiation leak – and is scheduled to close for good in just a few years. Where will we find this extremely rare isotope?