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CDN Forces Reactor Online Against Safety Regulations
Socguy writes "The Canadian government has passed legislation that will reopen an Ontario nuclear reactor that produces most of the world's supply of critical medical isotopes, even though the site has been shut down for safety maintenance. Witnesses and experts were called in to the House to face questions about safety concerns and all parties eventually voiced support for the bill, which would effectively suspend CNSC's oversight role for 120 days. The Chalk River reactor ceased operating on Nov. 18. Pressure on the government to restart operations began to build after delays in the shutdown of the government-run site, which generates two-thirds of the world's radioisotopes, began to cause a critical shortage of radioisotopes."
why not truck backup pair of generators on-site for those pumps (hell, those can't be anything like the generators for coolant systems of 2.5GW PWRs I've been at, gotta be tiny), get any needed priority ISI & FAC inspections done and leave all the chicken shit for another outage?
Ah, but then you have the problem of purity. The byproduct of the radioactive decay is no doubt a heavy metal - i.e. you really would want to minimize the amount going into the patient's bloodstream. So, for the sake of the test, you would desire a substance that is fairly pure - i.e. you can minimize the dose but maximize the activity level to gain a better reading.
So yes, while it's possible (but not feasible) to create a large stockpile, you will still need purification facilities to constantly re-process the decayed material out of your stockpile, which is really quite pointless.