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Why an Offline Nuclear Reactor Led to Thousands of Hospital Appointments Being Canceled
Radioisotopes are a vital resource for imaging patients’ organs and tumors—but these unstable elements also suffer from an unstable supply chain.
“I remember in Geneva, two months ago, we said, ‘Pay attention, because on this specific week there is a risk of shortage if there is any problem with one of the active reactors’—and that’s what happened,” recalls David Crunelle, a spokesman for Nuclear Medicine Europe (NMEU), an industrial association. The recent radioisotope shortage caused a few thousand appointment cancellations in the UK alone, estimates Stephen Harden, vice president of clinical radiology at the Royal College of Radiologists (RCR). They learn about maintenance schedules well in advance, and, as such, NMEU will often advise reactor chiefs to push these dates back slightly—for example, in order to help minimize the risk of multiple shutdowns occurring at the same time.
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