Belgium can use low-enriched uranium to produce a valuable medical isotope instead of the highly-enriched uranium it used to import from the United States for that purpose, the National Nuclear Security Administration said Tuesday.
Converting Belgium’s National Institute of Radioelements medical isotope production to low-enriched uranium was marked as a major nuclear non-proliferations milestone. More global production of molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) now uses low-enriched uranium, the NNSA said Tuesday in a statement.
“Thanks to the hard work of the NNSA team and our partners, including Belgium’s IRE, all major Mo-99 producers can now perform their vital work without the use of proliferation-sensitive HEU targets,” NNSA Administrator Jill Hruby said in a prepared statement. “This also means that all of the Mo-99 used in the United States is now produced without highly enriched uranium targets.”
As Mo-99 decays, it produces the isotope technetium-99m, which is used in 40,000 medical procedures in the U.S. each day, including in the diagnosis of heart disease and cancer, according to the NNSA.
Historically, Mo-99 was produced by irradiating HEU in nuclear reactors and then processing the irradiated material to extract the Mo-99. The uranium placed in the reactor for irradiation is known as a target. HEU is a proliferation-sensitive material that, if diverted or stolen, could be used as a component of a nuclear weapon.
The use of highly-enriched uranium — almost all of it exported by the U.S. — to produce Mo-99 raised nonproliferation concerns that eventually led the U.S. to quit exporting highly enriched uranium to overseas producers of the isotope in January 2022.
At the time, enough Mo-99 production was converted to the use of low-enriched uranium that there was a sufficient supply for U.S. medical patients without exporting highly-enriched uranium, according to U.S. government officials. That, combined with U.S. policy to onshore production, severely limited the market for the isotope’s production in Belgium, from which most of the world’s supply originated prior to 2022.
With help from NNSA, South Africa’s NTP Radioisotopes converted to LEU targets in 2017 and the Netherlands’ Curium converted in 2018. The fourth major Mo-99 producer, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, has always used LEU targets.
