I think they're just low information citizens. Someone else posted that the name change came about to prevent confusion between the NMR and nuclear medicine which uses radioactive materials because NMR doesn't emit ionizing radiation as radioactive isotopes and X-rays do. ^_^
That's the list price, but nobody pays list. Well, if an individual approached them about buying one item, that person would probably be charged list.
The actual price will vary, depending on who's buying it.
As for why it costs so much, if for legal purposes the tools or parts must be sourced from only certified suppliers, and the market for those materials is limited, then yeah, even seemingly routine stuff is going to be pretty spendy, compared to the standard retail market. But it's an entirely different market, with different requirements. You wouldn't want to risk cheap Chinese counterfeit parts getting installed into an MRI, for instance.
Selling this stuff is within my brother's line of work, and boy, has he got stories. One of his favorites has to do with a major domestic manufacturer who asked him for a quote on a replacement breaker for their plant. Those suckers are massive, since they're industrial, and priced accordingly. So, one genuine US-built and certified breaker, sized such and such - $6000.00.
My brother had an exclusive contract with the plant that built the breakers. Nobody, not even the plant, could sell them for less than my brother's price, so he knew he had no competition and was certain he had the sale. But then the head engineer at this manufacturing plant told him they were going with the low bidder. My brother was floored. _What_ low bidder, he asked. Well . . . the engineer at this plant told him that the local hardware store had put in a bid. They'd offered the very same breaker for less than a thousand bucks.
Now, there's no way a local hardware store would stock or even be able to procure these things. Plus, the price was impossible. My brother knew the cost to manufacture these, and if the breaker was legit, they would lose thousands of dollars on the sale. He advised the engineer of this, and warned him that the breaker had to be counterfeit. The engineer blew him off. My brother said, okay then - but if you have trouble with it, take it up with the hardware store, because it didn't come from me, and my source says it didn't come from them, either.
You can write the ending to the tale, natch: breaker failed in very short order. The head engineer went to my brother for help, but he couldn't provide any documentation to prove it had been produced by the domestic plant that supposedly built it. Too bad, so sad - you'll have to ask your local hardware store guy if he can fix or replace it.
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