|
|
Article: Isotope vulnerability imperils R&D. (research and development)
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- August 1, 1992
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1992 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
Last week, the Canadian government narrowly averted a strike by union workers at its nuclear reactor in Chalk River, Ontario. Within days of a strike, supplies of technetium-99m in the western hemissphere would have disappeared. In the United States alone, clinicians and researchers depend upon this radioactive isotope -- used in the vast majority of all nuclear-medicine procedures -- to conduct some 36,000 diagnostic tests daily
The threatened strike brought home to many policymakers, industrialists, and physicians the implications of having no domestic source of such an important isotope. Indeed, the United States' reliance on foreign isotopes is only growing, ...