SA nuclear medicine facility to restart again after another two-week shutdown

Following a lengthy period of shutdown in 2017 and 2018 which resulted from safety scares, the production of radioisotopes by NTP Radioistopes (SOC) started up again in November 2018 and ran until February this year, at which point it was stopped again for a short period to ensure that the system is working properly and that all required safety limits are adhered to. 

Although the SAFARI-1 facility, based at Pelindaba north of Johannesburg, was producing saleable product prior to its most recent temporary shutdown, it was not operating at full capacity - i.e. it was operating limited production runs per month. In fact, since the plant had been idle for many months, it was operating in a sort of test mode, where the various sensors were set to higher thresholds of sensitivity so that any violation, no matter how minor, would be detected immediately. In other words, the sensors are more sensitive than they needed to be to comply with international nuclear safety standards.

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Source: EE Publishers