I have Grave's disease (no nodules) and only had to have an uptake and scan right before my radioactive iodine treatment. Actually they only did a scan because for the "uptake" part what they have you take is a low dose of radioactive iodine (from what I recall, or some other radioactive isotope in a low dose) and I can't swallow pills (for the radioactive iodine treatment itself I took the liquid version) so they just injected me with another radioactive isotope that would show up on the scan. It was no big deal at all. In total it took about 30 or 40 minutes.

For the uptake and scan I believe they view the gland at different intervals after the medium is given and then again the following day to determine how much of the isotope or whatever, is taken up by the thyroid gland. I believe this is how they determine a 'hot nodule' from a 'cold nodule,' meaning malignant or possibly malignant or not.

My mother recently had a fine needle aspiration biopsy of a thyroid nodule and it was no big deal either. It's done as an outpatient under a local anesthetic.