Reactor closing has ripple effect
Associated PressShortage of technetium-99 brings medical test logjam.
Published December 8, 2007
NEW YORK - Thousands of patients, most in Canada, face delays in crucial medical tests because of a shortage of a radioactive substance used in those examinations, resulting from the shutdown of one nuclear reactor in Canada.
The substance is used in at least 15-million medical scans a year in the United States, by one estimate. Those scans are used to diagnose and assess a wide variety of conditions including cancer, heart disease and bone or kidney illnesses.
Over the past few days, many hospitals began facing a shortage of a radioactive substance called technetium-99 that is injected into patients to do these body scans. And that has forced them to cut back on the procedures.
"Many, many hospitals are working at about 20 to 30 percent of capacity" in doing the scans in the United States and Canada, estimated Dr. Sandy McEwan, president of the Society of Nuclear Medicine, based in Reston, Va. He said he didn't know how many scans had been postponed.
The shortage seemed to be hitting parts of Canada hardest. The Canadian Society of Nuclear Medicine estimates the shortage will cause delays in treatment for 50,000 Canadians each month that services are reduced.
The cause is the unexpectedly long maintenance shutdown of a nuclear reactor in Chalk River, Ontario. The 50-year-old reactor is North America's biggest source of the radioactive isotope that makes technetium.
The reactor probably will be working again by the end of December and almost surely by the end of January, the company says.
The shutdown stopped the reactor's output of a radioactive substance called molybdenum-99, which is processed and packaged into canisters that are sold to big hospitals and specialized pharmacies. These cylinders are "milked" for their technetium-99, which is then prepared for use in the medical scans. Since the technetium supply from each cylinder eventually peters out, the cylinders have to be regularly replaced.
Companies that make these cylinders say they're working with other molybdenum suppliers in Europe and South Africa to try to ease the shortage.