From the June 2012 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
As it became evident the NRU reactor at Chalk River in Canada was shutting down for good in 2016, plans were launched at various agencies in the supply chain to solve the problem. The companies that make the Tc-99m generators expanded their programs to develop other suppliers around the world and they looked for companies with technology that might help.
The Canadians were the first to offer grants to researchers investigating other ways to make Moly-99 without a reactor. In the U.S., the DOE and the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI) announced that together they were providing about $25 million in grants to several companies. They did this in hopes the companies could find a way to make Moly-99 without a reactor, thereby eliminating the need for the highly enriched uranium (HEU) used in reactors. This could reduce the potential of HEU falling into terrorist hands for the production of a weapon of mass destruction.
The problem with HEU and the associated terrorist bomb threat was inserted into the Moly-99 production process and it is now driving the development and the grants but not the science. When you read the literature of companies like Shine Medical Technologies and Northstar Medical Isotopes, what they talk about is developing a new and safer way to produce Moly-99. That new, safer way is with the use of accelerators like a linac or cyclotron. No reactor, no terrorists lurking around trying to grab some HEU from the reactor pool.
The NNSA and its GTRI initiative are working with blinders. HEU is everywhere there are reactors. In August 2011, the Nuclear Threat Initiative reported there are approximately 70 tons of HEU being used in civilian power and research reactor programs in over 30 countries. So inserting the requirement to produce Moly-99 without a reactor is folly when it is the best way to produce it and finding an alternative to reactor production of Molly-99 won’t reduce the terror threat. How about we reduce the terror threat by reducing the number of terrorists instead? But this is another discussion. My key point is that, so far, scientific evidence doesn’t support the claim that one can produce enough of the right Moly-99 to satisfy the need for nuclear medical diagnostic imaging. But because due to dangling grant money, there’s interest in finding another way.
GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy entered the field with the most practical solution. They proposed and developed a plan for using a power-generating reactor in Illinois for the production of Moly-99. The reactor and the fuel rods are there and will be for a very long time. So, why not use them? There was just one hitch — the cost of the Moly-99 coming out of the NRU reactor at Chalk River is cheap when compared to starting another reactor program. This resulted in the project being shelved because the economics aren’t attractive. The officials at GE Hitachi hold the technology and will most likely re-enter the market when they have fewer competitors and can charge a higher price.
