Hospitals brace for shortage of medical isotopes

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Makers of medical isotopes used in scores of diagnostic imaging tests are scrambling to find new suppliers after Canadian health officials temporarily closed a nuclear reactor last week that produces a third of the world's supply.

Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd shut down its 50-year-old reactor at Chalk River, Ontario, after a small leak of heavy water, used as part of the nuclear reaction.

It expects the reactor to remain out of operation for more than a month but some analysts think it could be months.

Only five nuclear reactors in the world produce molybdenum-99 or Mo-99, which is used in diagnostic tests for cancer, heart disease and a host of other ills.

"It's going to cause a shortage and it's going to cause a price rise. Those are unavoidable negative consequences," Stephen Brozak, president of WBB Securities in New Jersey, said in a telephone interview.

For patients in North America, the shutdown will have a dramatic impact, said Robert Atcher, president of the Society of Nuclear Medicine.

"That reactor supplies about half of the clinics and hospitals in the United States," he said. "About 8 million of our studies are imperiled because that reactor is offline."

Lantheus Medical Imaging, a private Massachusetts-based company that packages molybdenum-99 into lead-lined capsules called generators used by hospitals to mix the isotopes with saline, got most of its supply from Canada.