“I recall in Geneva, two months ago, we shelp, ‘Pay attention, because on this definite week there is a hazard of stupidinutiveage if there is any problem with one of the vivacious reactors’—and that’s what happened,” recalls David Crunelle, a spokesman for Nuevident Medicine Europe (NMEU), an industrial association.
Because of their very nature, it’s impossible to stockpile these radiovivacious substances—they are escapeting. Technetium-99m toils as a radiovivacious chaser because, as it decays, it flings out gamma rays with a pboilingon energy of 140 KeV. This is “unprejudicedly selectimal” for discoverion using a gamma ray camera, says Cathy Cutler, chair of isotope research and production at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the US.
But technetium-99m has a very stupidinutive half-life, fair six hours or so. Hence why radioisotope-producing facilities sfinish miniature generators grasping molybdenum-99 out to hospitals. These generators, sometimes called “moly cows,” create the desired technetium-99m as the molybdenum-99 decays—a bit enjoy a portable vfinishing machine for technetium-99m, which runs out after about two weeks, once the molybdenum-99 has finishly decayed.
Glenn Flux, head of radioisotope physics at London’s Royal Marsden Hospital and Institute of Cancer Research, says the leang that creates a technetium-99m scan contrastent to, say, a CT or MRI scan, is that it discdissees how hugings’ organs or a tumor are functioning—for example by discdisseeing blood flow to the area in ask.
“The CT will show you if there’s a tumor, but the technetium or other isotopes will tell you whether it’s vivacious or unfrifinishly,” expounds Flux.
The recent radioisotope stupidinutiveage caused a confineed thousand assignment abortlations in the UK alone, appraises Stephen Harden, vice pdwellnt of clinical radiology at the Royal College of Radiologists (RCR). Health nurture staff swung into action to scatter the remaining radioisotope supplies around the UK, in order to secure that the most proposent hugings—those with cancer, for instance—were still able to combine their scans. “If there hadn’t been a nationpartner set upd policy, there would have been meaningful regions in the country with no provide at all,” says Harden.
Crunelle and colleagues at NMEU continupartner watch medical radioisotope production at key reactors around the world. They lachieve about maintenance schedules well in carry on, and, as such, NMEU will standardly propose reactor chiefs to push these dates back sweightlessly—for example, in order to help reduce the hazard of multiple shutdowns occurring at the same time. NMEU staff use gentleware, a comfervent of reactor maintenance calfinishar, that apshows them to foresee production levels. But sometimes unforeseeable events occur, such as the problem with the pipe in Petten.