May day, May day In mid-May, Chalk River abruptly shut down
after a small leak was discovered. The reactor isn’t expected to
restart until the first quarter of 2010. Then in July, the U.S.
backup supplier—the Dutch Petten reactor—also shut down briefly
for routine maintenance. Suddenly, the supply of TC-99m isotopes
used in some 46,000 procedures each day in this country was in
jeopardy. Nuclear medicine providers predicted dire consequences
for patients. “It’s possible that some deaths could occur,”
Michael Graham, M.D., president of the Society for Nuclear
Medicine, told reporters. “Some people will be operated on that
don’t need to be, and vice versa.” Hospitals around the country
braced for the worst. Disaster waiting to happen For decades,
U.S. security experts have braced for another kind of disaster
with the same uranium. The United States began circulating
highly enriched uranium around the world in the 1950s under its
Atoms for Peace program, which promoted civilian nuclear
development. Though any al