Comment Re:This is too ignorant to be on /. (Score 2, Informative) 392
While I generally agree with your point, a lot of the details are really, really wrong:
The fluorine isotope you mentioned (F-18) can be made on a cyclotron, but has a half-life of 108 minutes, not 6 hours.
Iodine 131 is used to treat thyroid cancer, but is generally a waste product of nuclear reactors, not made with a cyclotron and it has an 8 day halflife. It can be volatilized and cause thyroid damage and cancer induction (think people hundreds of miles downwind of Chernobyl).
Molybdenum (again, reactor byproduct, not cyclotron made), decays into Technecium-99m, which is used in nuclear medicine scintillation studies, but has a half-life of 6 horus.
Finally, the cyclotron is not radioactive, you are correct, but after a while, the shielding, etc, is bombarded with so many particles that it itself can become radioactive (the inner surfaces). It's still perfectly safe to be outside the shielding, but removing the shielding down the road can be a pain.
Overall, if he were doing it correctly, I'd say it's probably perfectly safe for his neighbors. However, if he plans to run it as a production cyclotron for diagnostic imaging, he should be doing it the right way and putting it someplace zoned for commercial use and with adequate electrical infrastructure.
The fluorine isotope you mentioned (F-18) can be made on a cyclotron, but has a half-life of 108 minutes, not 6 hours.
Iodine 131 is used to treat thyroid cancer, but is generally a waste product of nuclear reactors, not made with a cyclotron and it has an 8 day halflife. It can be volatilized and cause thyroid damage and cancer induction (think people hundreds of miles downwind of Chernobyl).
Molybdenum (again, reactor byproduct, not cyclotron made), decays into Technecium-99m, which is used in nuclear medicine scintillation studies, but has a half-life of 6 horus.
Finally, the cyclotron is not radioactive, you are correct, but after a while, the shielding, etc, is bombarded with so many particles that it itself can become radioactive (the inner surfaces). It's still perfectly safe to be outside the shielding, but removing the shielding down the road can be a pain.
Overall, if he were doing it correctly, I'd say it's probably perfectly safe for his neighbors. However, if he plans to run it as a production cyclotron for diagnostic imaging, he should be doing it the right way and putting it someplace zoned for commercial use and with adequate electrical infrastructure.
