Molybdenum-99, Technetium-99m MURR (World Nuclear News, Gene Cramer)

WORLD NUCLEAR NEWS Daily 30 March 2017

A licence amendment request has been submitted to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to allow the University of Missouri Research Reactor to produce medical isotope molybdenum99, partners MURR, Nordion and General Atomics announced yesterday. Once operational, production from MURR will be capable of meeting nearly half of US demand for the isotope, which is currently imported from outside North America. Nordion expects to start receiving Mo-99 from MURR in mid- to late-2018.

……………………. Added by Gene Cramer ……………………

Technetium-99m From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Technetium-99m The first technetium-99m generator, 1958.

A Tc-99m pertechnetate solution is being eluted from Mo-99 molybdate bound to a chromatographic substrate Full table

General Name, symbol Technetium-99m,99Tc Neutrons 56 Protons 43 Nuclide data Half-life 6.0067 hours[1] Parent isotopes 99Mo (65.976 h) Decay products 99Tc

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A technetium injection contained in a shielded syringe Technetium-99m is a metastable nuclear isomer of technetium-99 (itself an isotope of technetium), symbolized as 99mTc, that is used in tens of millions of medical diagnostic procedures annually, making it the most commonly used medical radioisotope.

Technetium-99m is used as a radioactive tracer and can be detected in the body by medical equipment (gamma cameras). It is well suited to the role, because it emits readily detectable gamma rays with a photon energy of 140 keV (these 8.8 pm photons are about the same wavelength as emitted by conventional X-ray diagnostic equipment) and its half-life for gamma emission is 6.0058 hours (meaning 93.7% of it decays to 99Tc in 24 hours). The relatively "short" physical half-life of the isotope and its biological half-life of 1 day (in terms of human activity and metabolism) allows for scanning procedures which collect data rapidly but keep total patient radiation exposure low. The same characteristics make the isotope suitable only for diagnostic but never therapeutic use.

Technetium-99m was discovered as a product of cyclotron bombardment of molybdenum. This procedure produced molybdenum-99, a radionuclide with a longer half-life (2.75 days), which decays to Tc-99m. At present, molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) is used commercially as the easily transportable source of medically used Tc-99m. In turn, this Mo-99 is usually created commercially by fission of highly enriched uranium in aging research and material testing nuclear reactors in several countries.

PERSONAL : You haven’t lived until you see a video of your wife’s heart, when they move the video to all angles to observe it beating ---- and say “There is nothing wrong with her heart. “

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