Technetium-99m is a radioactive tracer that is used in twenty million medical diagnostic procedures per year. At least 31 radiopharmaceuticals based on Tc-99m are used for imaging and studying organs such as the brain, heart muscle, thyroid, lungs, liver, gallbladder and kidneys, as well as the skeleton and blood and for the investigation of tumours.
The ‘m’ in the name of technetium-99m indicates that it is metastable. Tc-99m is radioactive because one or more of the protons and neutrons in its nucleus is in an excited state. Tc-99m decays into Tc-99 with a half-life of six hours and this makes it particularly well suited to use in the body: after one day (four half-lives) only 6.3% of the initial Tc-99m remains. (It’s worth noting that the non-metastable technetium-99 is also radioactive, but with a half-life of 211000 years, it presents a very low risk.)
This short half-life also creates a problem: obtaining Tc-99m when required. Hospitals cannot run their own nuclear reactors and so they rely on technetium generators - machines that produce Tc-99m from the decay of its parent isotope molybdenum-99. Molybdenum-99 has a longer half-life (66 hours) and can therefore be transported to hospitals and still remain useful for up to a week.
Molybdenum-99 is produced in nuclear reactors by bombarding a highly enriched uranium target with neutrons, causing it to fission, forming Mo-99 (and many other isotopes) as it does. The vast majority of Mo-99 is produced by five nuclear reactors around the world that are specifically devoted to the production of nuclear isotopes for medicine: NRU in Canada, BR2 in Belgium, SAFARI-1 in South Africa, HFR Petten in the Netherlands and OSIRIS-1 in France.* Temporary shutdowns of NRU and HFR Petten in the 2000s led to a long-term shortage of Mo-99.
Once Mo-99 has been produced it is placed into a technetium generator and these generators are transported to hospitals. The technetium generators make use of the fact that molybdenum likes to bond with aluminium oxide (alumina) but technetium does not. The generators are “milked” by drawing a saline solution across an inner molybdenum/alumina capsule; during this elution process any technetium that has formed will be drawn away with the saline and can then be used in tests.
A cutaway model of a technetium generator.
The molybdenum/alumina sample is placed in the centre of the device, surrounded by shielding (painted red in this case). Saline is injected through one of the tubes at the top of the device and flows into a shielded container through the other tube, after having passed over the sample and “picked up” radioactive technetium-99m.
* Mo-99 is also produced in much smaller amounts from low-enriched uranium at the OPAL reactor in Australia and at other sites.
Fascinating post. I really enjoyed this one. A few question though, when the molybdenum/alumina capsule is milked with saline solution, why does the technetium come out in the solution? Why is a saline solution used vs pure water? and finally: does the technetium form a salt?
Cheers.
Saline is used because it can then be injected into a person; if you inject water into a vein it will cause hemolysis and possibly death. The reason technetium comes out in solution is that technetium does not bond to the aluminium oxide like the molybdenum does — it’s a form of chromatography called “column chromatography”.