America Notices Chalk River Reactor Crisis

According to Reuters: "Makers of medical isotopes used in scores of diagnostic imaging tests are scrambling to find new suppliers after Canadian health officials shut down a nuclear reactor last week that produces a third of the world's supply."

Well that's not quite right. It's not the makers of medical isotopes who are scrambling - they're shut down - it's the users of medical isotopes who are in trouble - like cancer patients awaiting radiation therapy.

Reuters gets this much right, though:

"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."