Multipurpose Applied Physics Lattice Experiment
Failed medical isotope reactor in Canada / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
MAPLE, short for the Multipurpose Applied Physics Lattice Experiment, later renamed MDS Medical Isotope Reactors (MMIR), was a dedicated isotope-production facility built by AECL and MDS Nordion. It included two identical reactors, I and II, as well as the isotope-processing facilities necessary to produce a large portion of the world's medical isotopes, especially molybdenum-99, medical cobalt-60, xenon-133, iodine-131 and iodine-125.[1]
An operational license for the MAPLE I reactor was granted in 1999, and the reactor went critical for the first time in early 2000. MAPLE II followed in the fall of 2003. Problems with the reactors during the testing period, most notably an unexpected positive power co-efficient of reactivity, led to the cancellation of the project in 2008 and the shutdown of both reactors.