AECL Research Chalk River

Canada / Ontario / Deep River /
 nuclear research centre, medical research
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The Chalk River Laboratories is a Canadian nuclear research facility.

One of the original labs of the Manhattan Project, along with Los Alamos & Oak Ridge.

The National Research Universal Reactor has an extremely high importance in the world's medical research. Chalk River is the most important producer of 99m Tc Technetium (isotope 99 metastable) used throughout the world for medical diagnosis in the world.

99m Tc is a very short half-life (6,01 hours) low energy Gamma ray emitter (170 keV) that is injected into the human body for 3D imaging. It allows a 3 dimentional view of the inside of the human body without any chirurgical operation or intrusion. 99m Tc is special because it ONLY produces gamma rays (no significant alpha or beta rays) during it's decay to 99 Tc.

The Chalk River facility produces over 60 % of all medical technetium in the world.
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalk_River_Laboratories
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   46°3'5"N   77°21'46"W

Comments

  • Awesome place!
  • Site of the infamous reactor that makes medical isotopes, shut down in November 2007 due to safety concerns and due to reopen after emergency legislation was passed on December 11, 2007.
  • This vital and reliable reactor was indeed reopened as scheduled and continues to function today (2012) as one of the world's leading research and medical isoptope reactors. Scientists from many nations are able to carry out experiments in its reactor test loops. It was not shut down "due to safety concerns" - rather it was taken off line to allow controlled repair of some calandria corrosion that was causing a coolant loss that had reached the stage where the decision was made to repair immediately. This was accomplished by designing and inventing tools and procedures that had never before been achieved, functioning flawlessly and remotely in a hostile radioactive environment.
This article was last modified 13 years ago