I am radioactive !…
At least for the next couple of hours .
I had a cardiac stress test today.. as I do about every 5 years.; it’s something my doc has me do bcause of the family history we have.. it’s kinda fun.. you get on a treadmill then they shoot you up with a radioactive gamma-emitting isotope (99Tc).. then they put you in a gamma CT scanner.. Every time it tells me I’m fine.. and today was the same.
It does get me thinkign of the wierd life of Isotopes.. .. I read about 99Tc .
It was discovered in 1938 by Emilio Segrè and Glenn T. Seaborg after bombarding natural molybdenum with 8 MeV deuterons in the 37-inch (940 mm) cyclotron of Ernest Orlando Lawrence‘s Radiation laboratory.[2]
I learned that the doeses.. which are only useful fro about 6 hours are made locally by a company in Willisont using soemthing called a ‘Moly Cow” .. .. which Wikipedia helpfully explains thus:
Technetium-99m’s short half-life of 6 hours makes storage impossible and would make transport very expensive. It is instead its parent nuclide 99Mo that is supplied to hospitals after its extraction from the neutron-irradiated uranium targets and its purification in dedicated processing facilities.[notes 1][56] It is shipped by specialised radiopharmaceutical companies in the form of technetium-99m generators worldwide or directly distributed to the local market. The generators, colloquially known as a moly cows, are devices designed to provide radiation shielding for transport and to minimize the extraction work done at the medical facility. A typical dose rate at 1 metre from Tc-99m generator is 20-50 μSv/h during transport.[57] These generators’ output declines with time and must be replaced weekly, since the half-life of 99Mo is still only 66 hours.
Molybdenum-99 spontaneously decays to excited states of 99Tc through beta decay. Over 87% of the decays lead to the 142 keV excited state of Tc-99m. A
β−electronand a νeelectron antineutrino are emitted in the process (99Mo → 99mTc + β−+ νe). The β−
electrons are easily shielded for transport, and 99mTc generators are only minor radiation hazards, mostly due to secondary X-rays produced by the electrons (also known as Bremsstrahlung).At the hospital, the 99mTc that forms through 99Mo decay is chemically extracted from the technetium-99m generator. Most commercial 99Mo/99mTc generators use column chromatography, in which 99Mo in the form of water-soluble molybdate, MoO42− is adsorbed onto acid alumina (Al2O3). When the 99Mo decays, it forms pertechnetate TcO4−, which, because of its single charge, is less tightly bound to the alumina. Pulling normal saline solution through the column of immobilized 99MoO42−elutes the soluble 99mTcO4−, resulting in a saline solution containing the 99mTc as the dissolved sodium salt of the pertechnetate. One technetium-99m generator, holding only a few micrograms of 99Mo, can potentially diagnose 10,000 patients[citation needed] because it will be producing 99mTc strongly for over a week.
Well.. that makes me feel better
The only let down.. is that I don’t appear to have gained any super powers
shucks
nite all, nite sam
-me