U.S. Receives LEU-Produced Medical Isotopes

Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2010
The United States has received its first commercial-volume delivery of medical isotopes made from low-enriched uranium for potential use in hospitals throughout the country, Creamer Media reported Friday (see GSN, July 23).

(Aug. 24) - Workers install measuring equipment at the National Research Universal reactor, a Canadian facility that uses highly enriched uranium to produce medical isotopes. The United States last month received its first commercial-sized shipment of isotopes, produced in South Africa using proliferation-resistant low-enriched uranium (Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. photo).

The molybdenum-99 was produced by the state-owned Nuclear Energy Corp. of South Africa. The material reached the United States on July 21 and must pass multiple quality assessments ahead of potential distribution.

Molybdenum-99 through the decay process produces technetium-99m, which is employed annually in 16 million U.S. medical procedures, including detection of cancer, heart disease and other diseases, one U.S. lawmaker said last year.

The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration through its Global Threat Reduction Initiative aided the South African company's switch from a radioisotope production process that relied on highly enriched-uranium to one involving low-enriched uranium (see GSN, March 30). The company is the first in the world to produce significant amounts of molybdenum-99 from low-enriched-uranium. Medical isotope samples have also been delivered to China, Israel, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands and Poland for evaluation (Natasha Odendaal, Creamer Media, Aug. 20).

The South African operation shows it is possible to use material other than weapon-usable highly enriched uranium to produce medical isotopes, the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies stated yesterday.

"Necsa’s success in using LEU belies skeptics’ claims that converting to LEU-based production would be too difficult and time consuming to effectively provide medical isotopes on the global market," it said in a press release.

While highly enriched uranium has generally been used in manufacturing molybdenum-99, it would take only 25 kilograms of the material to power a nuclear bomb. "Low-enriched uranium poses far less of a risk," the release states.

The House of Representatives in 2009 approved the American Medical Isotopes Production Act, which encourages U.S. manufacturing of radiopharmaceuticals and the curtailing of bomb-grade uranium exports for medical isotope production. Senator Christopher Bond (R-Mo.) has placed a hold on the bill, claiming the bill would disrupt access to molybdenum-99.

The United States is weighing a request from Canada for 17.5 kilograms of weapon-grade uranium for manufacturing molybdenum-99 (see GSN, Jan. 6; James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies release, Aug. 23).