BARC Plans To Set Up Reactor Exclusively For Medical Isotopes

The Bhabha Atomic Research Centre will build an isotope production reactor exclusively for medical purposes, its director Vivek Bhasin said here on Wednesday. Speaking at the launch of AKTOCYTE, a food supplement for cancer patients, Bhasin also said that the BARC and Tata Memorial Centre hospitals will be providing guidance for setting up nuclear medicine departments in all the medical colleges in the country over the next 20 years.

"The BARC is going to build a new reactor...an isotope production reactor dedicated only for medical isotopes," he said.

The volume of production will be so high that India will not need to import these isotopes, Bhasin added.

"This will be a novel type of reactor and its design is more or less complete. The project will start soon," he said.