Fluor Daniel to process radioisotopes

The Canadian subsidiary of engineering and construction firm Fluor Daniel of Irvine, CA, has won a contract to process medical radioisotopes produced by the Maple reactor complex being built by Atomic Energy of Canada (AECL). Fluor Daniel Canada will construct a processing facility near the Maple complex to house hot cells, which are used for the separation of isotopes.

AECL is building the Maple reactors to provide a stable supply of radioisotopes such as molybdenum, the raw material for technetium-99m, a commonly used radioisotope in nuclear medicine studies. The age of the existing AECL reactor that is being used to produce molybdenum has concerned nuclear medicine physicians, and a labor dispute at AECL caused a brief shutdown of molybdenum shipments last summer (SCAN 7/9/97). The Maple reactors are scheduled to be completed by 1999, with medical isotope production beginning some time after that.