In a New Year’s boon for Belgium’s Institute for Radioelements, the Department of Energy has postponed by two years a ban on exporting U.S.-origin, weapon-usable uranium for the production of medical isotopes, agency head Dan Brouillette told Congress last week.
“[C]urrent global supplies of Mo-99 [Molybdenum 99] produced without the use of HEU [highly enriched uranium] are not sufficient to meet U.S. patient needs,” Brouillette wrote in a letter dated Jan. 02, to Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Brouillette copied Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), the Committee’s ranking member, on the note.
Mo-99, which can be produced from either highly enriched or low-enriched uranium, is the source for technetium-99: a gamma-emitting isotope commonly used for medical diagnoses. Some U.S. companies, as well as foreign suppliers besides Belgium, already produce Mo-99 with low-enriched uranium.
The Belgian Institute for Radioelements in Fleurus, Belgium, some 40 miles over the road from the capital city Brussels, is in the process of switching over Mo-99 production to low-enriched uranium from highly enriched uranium.
In the meantime, DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which controls the U.S. stockpile of highly enriched uranium, seeks a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to export nearly 5 kilograms of weapon-usable uranium to the Belgian institute for conversion into Mo-99.
With the DOE’s finding that low-enriched uranium production of Mo-99 does not meet U.S. needs, one of the hurdles for granting that export license is now removed. In addition, U.S. law allows DOE to delay the ban on exporting HEU for medical isotope production until early January 2026, if the agency deems that appropriate.
Among the U.S. companies making Mo-99 with low-enriched uranium is NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes, of Beloit, Wis. The company has now supplied the medical isotope in the U.S. for just over a year.
As part of an nonproliferation effort aimed at reducing the spread of weapon-usable material abroad, the American Medical Isotopes Act of 2012 banned export of highly enriched uranium for production of Mo-99. However, the law allowed the DOE to delay the export ban, which the agency now has done.
