Woo Hoo! Isotopes Rule!
Gotta love the Isotopes!
After a 15 month hiatus, the Chalk River nuclear reactor in Ontario, Canada, is starting to once again produce isotopes used for medical imaging.
The Chalk River reactor produced one third of medical isotopes used for imaging procedures all over the world. Namely, it produced Molybdenum-99, which is created as a fission product in the nuclear reaction.
The Molybdenum-99 isotope is unstable, and will decay into Technetium-99m. The Technetium can then be injected into a patient to perform medical scans.
Molybdenum-99 is kept in specialized containers while it decays into Technetium-99m
Now, I did my Masters thesis on Magnetic Resonance Imaging, so these medical procedures bring back some good memories for me. As such, I am going to start a series of posts describing the “Physics Of…” various medical techniques.
These will include things like X-Rays, PET scans, CAT scans, etc. So look forward to that, its a subject I hold very dear to my heart.
A Quantum of Knowledge 