Technetium supply to tighten further

(DIAGNOSTIC IMAGING) -- This week brings bad news for the nuclear medicine community. The already constrained supply of technetium in the U.S. could get even tighter in the coming weeks. The Dutch High Flux Reactor at Petten, the Netherlands, is scheduled to go down for repairs lasting until August. And restart of the reactor at Chalk River, in Ontario, which was supposed to offset this loss and, eventually, normalize the supply of molybdenum-99 and the technetium it generates, may be delayed. MDS Nordion (TSX: MDS; NYSE: MDZ), one of the world’s major suppliers of medical isotopes, has warned that any such delays, coming on top of the Petten reactor shutdown, could cause a global shortfall in technetium, one worse than any seen before. The result would be substantial delays in nuclear cardiac imaging.

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