The six-day strike by technicians at the Chalk River laboratories in Canada ended at the weekend and the main reactor at Chalk River became operational again on Tuesday (see last week's
Brookhaven will produce germanium-68, which is used to calibrate positron emission tomography (PET) scanners, and copper-67 for diagnostic and research purposes. It will also make strontium-82: this isotope decays into rubidium-82, which is widely used in studies of the heart. The recently upgraded Brookhaven Linac Isotope Producer (BLIP) accelerator will be used to produce the isotope. The device bombards metal targets with protons to produce short lived isotopes. The isotopes will be produced when BLIP is not needed to accelerate protons for particle physics experiments at Brookhaven’s Alternating Gradient Synchrotron.
