INNOVATION July-August 2012

2 011 2 012 PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS The 2011/2012 Project Highlights pictorial showcases the engineering and geoscience work of APEGBC members in BC and around the world. Innovation thanks all the individuals and companies that responded to our annual call for project photographs.

Tc-99mDirect Production by Cyclotron TRIUMF, Canada’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics, has developed a system for cyclotron-based production of the world’s most used medical radioisotope, technetium- production of molybdenum-99, scheduled to cease in 2016. By developing a method to coat enriched molybdenum-100 onto a cooled substrate, the team has enabled irradiations at a power density up to 1.4 kW/cm 2 . Combined with systems to remotely place these coated substrates into the cyclotron for irradiation and remove them, TRIUMF is enabling a diverse supply of medical isotopes. TRIUMF worked with the 99m. Presently Canada’s supply of this radioisotope is obtained from the Chalk River, Ontario, reactor-based

British Columbia Cancer Agency, the Centre for Probe Development and Commercialization (Ontario), and the Lawson Health Research Institute (Ontario) to demonstrate this technology on Canada’s growing number of medical cyclotrons.

2 8

J U LY/AU G U S T 2 012

i n n o v a t i o n