The current crisis of the Japanese nuclear reactors as a result of the natural disasters should have “a fairly small impact on the U.S. attempts to develop medical isotopes domestically,” Robert W. Atcher, PhD, MBA, leader of the medical isotope task force and past-president of the Society of Nuclear Medicine (SNM), explained in an interview.

The FDA has approved Covidien’s production of technetium-99m (Tc-99m) derived from the low-enriched uranium molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) isotope.