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by FiatLuxDave 2638 days ago
Hi Thomas! Congrats on the launch! You are meeting a real need, so I hope you make lots of money doing it.

I mainly just wanted to say "Hello", since it's a small industry, and if you have quality issues at some point we will probably end up talking anyways (one of my jobs is maintaining calibration traceability for a major dose calibrator manufacturer).

I sent you a LinkedIn contact; it appears we have a mutual friend.

Do you have any interesting innovations you are considering, other than consolidating production facilities? I presume you are planning on sticking with the normal "cows and pigs" methods of delivery to pharmacies, for compatibility.

1 comments

By consolidating production facilities and positioning the facility as a factory, I can add some unique capabilities for moving things in and out of the reactor core.

As an example, most research reactors have a facility called a "rabbit tube" which is similar to the pneumatic tubes at a bank. You can basically shoot little capsules in and out of the core at will this way. But most of these reactors only have one of these tubes, or none, and every experiment they move in or out of the core is done by hand with 20 foot poles.

I want to automate the entire process by making every irradiation facility in the core accessible via a pneumatic tube system, and have a software system automatically eject material that had "cooked" long enough and send it straight to the chemical processing rooms via this shuttle system. This would drastically reduce human performance errors, reduce personnel requirements, reduce radiation exposure, reduce the capex required to move highly radioactive material around the facility, and allow me to move things in and out of the core without first needing to shut down the reactor.

In the short term, I'll most likely be sticking to the "cow" method, but as I learn more about that end of the supply chain, I'm sure I'll find more places to push for innovation.