A hospital orders 1850 MBq of the diagnostic isotope technetium-99m (99mTc). The isotope has a half-life of 6.02 h and is shipped by ground courier. The shipment leaves the radiopharmacy at 08:00 and arrives at the hospital at 14:30 on the same day. Assume no activity is lost except by nuclear decay.
(a) Calculate the activity of the shipment upon arrival at 14:30. Express your answer in MBq.
(b) The prescribed activity for a single patient scan is 740 MBq. Determine the maximum number of full patient doses that can be obtained from the shipment at 14:30, assuming the hospital draws doses essentially instantaneously.
(c) If the hospital instead plans to administer the last dose at 17:30, compute the activity of that final dose at the moment of injection and comment on whether it meets the 740 MBq specification.