http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2492/a-primer-on-irans-medical-reactor
A Primer on Iran's Medical Reactor Plans
http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2492/a-primer-on-irans-medical-reactor
posted Sunday October 4, 2009 under iran, nuclear-fuel-cycle
A swimming pool-type reactor similar to the TRR in Iran whose fuel is apparently the subject of a deal between Iran and the P5+1. The eerie blue light is Cherenkov radiation given off as subatomic particles streak through the surrounding water. ( Techno-Wonk Alert: There are a lot of numbers in this post so if you are not into that, skip to the Summary and Discussion section.)
Friday's apparent agreement to send Iranian LEU out of the country for further enrichment, so that it can be used to produce medical isotopes in the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR), will undoubtedly cause a lot of people to want to know more about the production of medical isotopes. It certainly made me want to know more. Fortunately, a great deal of information about Iran's plans for isotope production can be gleaned from a paper in Annals of Nuclear Energy (vol. 30, pp. 883-895, 2003) but Sayareh, Ghannadi Maragheh, and Shamsaie; three researchers at Amir Kabir Technical University and the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.
Most importantly, they are planning on producing 20 Curies (Ci) of Molybdenum 99 (99Mo) every other week. This is about half their diagnostic requirements for 99Mo, which they currently import. Currently, 95% of the world's 99Mo supply is produced in six reactors around the world. As of 2006, the reactors in Canada (which produces 40% of the world's needs), the Netherlands, Brussels, France, Germany, and South Africa used weapons grade uranium as the target . That means that sheets of 90+% Uranium 235 are inserted into the high neutron densities found inside these reactors for very brief periods of time. The US supplies about 25 kg of weapons grade uranium each year to Canada's NRU reactor alone. This HEU is inserted into the reactor for a short time, just long enough to "burn up" about 5% of the uranium 235. The irradiated fuel is removed and the molybdenum is extracted.........
Here is a quote from one of the Ebay-Canada forums:
Harper's Humiliating Muzzle on Scientists in Community General and Help Boards in eBay Canada Discussion Boards
http://forums.ebay.ca/thread.jspa?threadID=600035463&rw=true&print=true
"So do you think Harper was behind the disappearance of Lachlan Cranswick?
"He was apparently a brilliant scientist at the Chalk River nuclear reactor. His sudden and mysterious disappearance is very puzzling. Do you think he knew something Toby and met with foul play?
UN Sanctions Hit HospitalsIran Running Out of Life-Saving Isotopes
By Thomas Erdbrink in Tehran
The research reactor in Tehran is now used exclusively for isotope production. Trade sanctions imposed on Iran over its nuclear program are affecting treatment of people suffering from heart and kidney disease and various cancers. Some 850,000 patients are at risk because the country is running out of radioactive isotopes essential to radiotherapy.Ruhollah Solook, 78, was dying before a donated kidney and complex radiotherapy saved his life.
Recovering in an isolation room in Tehran's oldest hospital, he expressed his joy in a telephone interview. "They saved my life already. I hope they will be able to cure me entirely now." But Solook's treatment has become a race against time, as has that of 850,000 other Iranians suffering from heart and kidney disease and various cancers. Sometime after March 2010, the country will run out of technetium-99, a radioisotope crucial to the treatment of these diseases.
Technetium-99 is currently produced locally in Iran."We recommend treatment with these products to hundreds of patients every month in our hospital alone," said Dr. Gholamreza Pourmand, Solook's physician. Technetium-99 is essential to radiotherapy, Pourmand said: "If we cannot help these people, some will die. It's as simple as that."
Rare and Precious
The impending shortage of technetium-99 is caused by the controversy surrounding the Iranian nuclear program. The sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council, aimed at moving Iran to halt its uranium enrichment program, are supposed to leave medical practice unaffected. In reality, however, Iran has become unable to procure a wide range of medical products. Body scanners cannot be imported from the US or the EU, since parts in these machines could also be useful to Iran's nuclear program.
An embargo on medical isotopes was introduced in 2007, in defiance of the medical exception clause touted as part of the trade sanctions, Iranian leaders said. Isotopes are a rare commodity produced at only five sites worldwide. One of these, the High Flux Reactor in the Dutch town of Petten, currently accounts for 30 to 40 percent of worldwide production, but it is scheduled for retirement soon. Apart from the UN sanctions, so many restrictions -- particularly American -- on trade with Iran exist, that in practice nobody is willing to supply Iran with medical isotopes any longer. Out of dire necessity, Iran now uses its 41-year-old research reactor in Tehran -- originally constructed by the US -- exclusively for isotope production, a job which used to take only a day a week. However, the reactor's fuel, provided by Argentina in 1993, is quickly running out, the scientists said.
'We Will Make Our Own'
Iranian leaders, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, say that Iran might produce new fuel itself, which would prove a sensitive issue. Iran would need to enrich uranium......