Research Reactors: The Quiet Workhorses

Some 220 research reactors operate worldwide, and most people never hear of them. They make the molybdenum 99 that decays into technetium 99m, the isotope used in tens of millions of medical scans a year, with Petten in the Netherlands and the Australian OPAL among key suppliers.

They also test materials, dope silicon for computer chips, train operators and probe physics. Research reactors like EBR-I lit the path: it made the first nuclear electricity in 1951..