South Africa provides new, safer source of key medical isotope
DEC 06, 2010
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.024878
NPR : A company in South Africa has developed the ability to manufacture molybdenum-99 from low-enriched uranium. The innovation is important for two reasons. First, 99Mo decays into another isotope, technetium-99m, which emits 140-keV gamma rays with a half-life of 6 hours. Those two properties make 99mTc a useful medical tracer. Before the South African source came online, the US supply of 99Mo came from just two sources, in Canada and the Netherlands. The Canadian and Dutch sources make 99Mo from highly enriched uranium, which accounts for the second reason for the new, South African source’s importance: decreased risk that terrorists could get their hands on the raw material for making a nuclear weapon.
© 2010 American Institute of Physics
