There is no assignment more honorable for ET Management and Advice: checking a high-tech building that has been designed and built with the aim of making sick people better. And so ET Management and Advice is proud of the assignment of the VU Medical Center Imaging to check and test the new accommodation of the four Cyclotrons from A to Z. That is to say in a general sense, but especially also through its design, electronically, gas-technical and in the field of water and ventilation. So that, thanks to ET Management and Advice, medical isotopes can soon be produced safely. Medical isotopes that are essential for detecting cancer cells.
For who thinks we have the nuclear reactor in Petten, right? Yes, that’s right, but it serves hospitals on a global level. There are namely two methods for realizing medical radioisotopes: via nuclear reactors and via the Cyclotrons. Nuclear reactors are preferred for the production of some isotopes, such as for molybdenum-99. Others require a Cyclotron. In addition, isotopes produced by means of Cyclotrons cannot be used for the same applications as those made in a nuclear reactor. Medical isotopes extracted from the Cyclotrons are, so to speak, short-lived, so they must be produced in or near a hospital. The radioisotopes produced in reactors have a much longer shelf life: up to a week in any case and sometimes even longer. As a result, “Petten” can deliver to hospitals all over the world and the four Cyclotrons in the VU are really only intended for the sick in the Amsterdam region.
This does not alter the fact that there is also a radioactive risk with Cyclotron technology. This means that the assignment of the VU Medical Center Imaging for ET Management and Advice has a golden colour in our order book. In terms of challenge, complexity and target group, this assignment is top of the bill and at the same time it makes you humble when you realize why these machines are needed.
Assignment details
The technique in which the medical isotopes are realized consists of magnetic force and, by extension, particle accelerators. ET Management and Advice will endlessly test and fine-tune this entire process, from the proverbial first push of the button to the extraction of the isotopes and the other final actions, in weeks 50 and 51 by means of an SAT_2020. So that any risk is excluded and the BV Cyclotron can start up in its new environment in January 2021 as planned.
The main components that will be tested are:
- Isotope extraction
- Pressure regime BV Cyclotron
- BLACK OUT à BLACK START, whereby the entire network (preferred and not preferred) is switched off or switched on.
Prior to SAT_2020, various tests will be carried out based on functionality and performance, the so-called Functional Tests. Furthermore, SAT_tests also take place on subsystems. We will inform you in a next news item if all SAT_tests have gone well and the Cyclotrons are working as they should.
Follow-up assignment
Incidentally, ET Management and Advice will disseminate its commissioning skills and knowledge in more workspaces with nuclear material in 2021. In the spring of 2021, control and test assignments are planned in the Animal Lab and the Radionuclide Center, part of the Radiology and Nuclear Medicine department.