IF MEDICAL isotopes were created using particle accelerators rather than nuclear reactors it might keep the supply going when reactors shut down.
Thomas Ruth at Canada’s in Vancouver says that bombarding uranium with a powerful beam of light, rather than the neutrons used in traditional reactors, could produce the medical isotope molybdenum-99 (Nature, vol 457, p 5). The intense light could be produced by firing a 2-megawatt beam of electrons from a particle accelerator at a tungsten target.
The technique requires uranium-238, a less fissile uranium isotope than that used by reactors,…
