Because ANSTO shut down cyclotron, Australia has the problem of importing a short-lived medical isotope

“……..Australia lost the capacity to make the radioactive isotope iodine-123 – used in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer in the nerve cells of children – just over a decade ago with the closure of the National Medical Cyclotron in Camperdown, NSW. ……… But according to Ansto, iodine-123 is needed in clinical settings by about a dozen patients around Australia at any one time – most of them children with neuroblastoma. This means Australia now relies on imports from Japan. But with a half-life of just over 13 hours – meaning the levels of radioactivity halve every 13 hours – this isotope needs to be distributed to Australian hospitals and health centres very quickly. It expires within 33 hours of being manufactured in Japan. “The challenge with transporting nuclear medicine is the products have a short half-life,” Ian Martin, the general manager of Ansto Health, told Guardian Australia. “We need to get the isotopes from point A to point B before they decay too much to be effective, a complex task when B is in another hemisphere.” ……….  Guardian,     11 Aug 2020,

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