Nuclear reactors don't just create energy; a few also create medical isotopes vital to medical tests that doctors have come to rely on. The Radiological Society of North America estimates at least 80% of the nearly 20 million nuclear medicine procedures performed in the U.S. each year use technetium-99m, also known as Tc-99.
The worldwide radiopharmaceutical shortage, as its called, has affected the ability of doctors to perform cardiac stress tests that use nuclear tracers. Tim Darragh in the Allentown Morning Call writes about doctors in the Lehigh Valley who have turned to MRIs and stress echocardiograms to replace the Tc-99 tests.
