Continuing the U.S. campaign to inshore production of Molybdenum-99, the Secretary of Energy this week announced she cleared the way to provide upstart domestic manufacturers of the medical isotope with up to 750 kilograms of high assay, low enriched uranium annually.
Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm set up the annual transfer to industry on April 6, in a notice published Monday in the Federal Register that this industry-to-government pipeline will not harm domestic uranium miners.
Granholm’s signed the determination several months after effectively ending the export of U.S.-original highly enriched uranium to the foreign producers of Molybdenum-99. That trade had historically accounted for most of the U.S. supply, benefitting among others Belgium’s Institute for Radioelements in Fleurus, Belgium.
Congress last decade passed legislation intended to spur a domestic Mo-99 industry and DOE’s efforts to put the law into practice have delivered funding to a number of would-be U.S. providers.
Chief among these is NorthStar Medical technologies, Beloit, Wis., the leading U.S. upstart among multiple, would-be Mo-99 providers that have received economic assistance from DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration.
Mo-99 is the parent isotope of technetium-99, a gamma-emitter used for medical imaging.
