Brussels – World supplies of radioactive substances for use in medicine are reliant on a dangerously low number of producers and risk running out, the European Union’s executive warned on Friday.
A radioactive isotope known as Technetium-99m is the active ingredient in treatments ranging from brain scans to fighting cancer. But the element from which it comes, Molybdenum-99 (Mo-99), is produced in only a handful of ageing research reactors.
“Worldwide, only seven government-owned research reactors provide about 95 per cent of the world’s Mo-99 production … Read more…