New Source of an Isotope in Medicine Is Found
Technetium 99 (tech 99m) is a very important and valuable isotope in the medical field. It is used to measure blood flow in the heart and help in diagnosing bone and breast cancers. Tech 99m is a product of rapid decay of another radioactive isotope, molybdenum 9, which is from the spilt atoms of uranium 235. Tech 99m emits gamma rays that are easy to spot in a patient’s body. However, the isotope also decays rather quickly. As a result, doctors have to schedule procedures late at night and on weekends to make use of the isotope before it vanishes. About two thirds of the world’s supply comes from two reactors. The reactor in Onatrio, which has been shut down for repairs for 9 months, and the other reactor is in the Netherlands, which has closed for 6 months. This has raised enormous alarms among the medical community. Some patients have been forced to revert to inferior materials and techniques that have stopped usage 20 years ago for treatment. The US has increasingly looked abroad for radioactive materials. The inspector general of the Energy Department reported those supplies were sometimes unreliable. It either was delivered late or did not meet specifications. Covidien, a company in St Louis, announced they signed a contract with the operators at the Maria reactor, near Warsaw. The Maria rector is one of the world’s most powerful research reactors. However, the Maria will only fill a small fraction of the wide gap left from the shutdown other two reactors. Anrzej Strupczweski, chairman of the nuclear safety commission in Polish institute of Atomic energy, stated it would be tricky to produce tech 99m at the Maria reactor. He said that it lacked a force-air system to cool the uranium but a recent test went well.
M. Walid, “New Source of an Istope in Medicine Is Found,” NYTimes, 2/16/2010.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/health/17isotope.html?ref=science
, [2/18/2010].
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