The U.S. Department of Energy is studying whether to sign off on an extension of the legal deadline to end exports of weapon-grade uranium for foreign production of the medical isotope molybdenum-99 (Mo-99).
The agency’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is accepting comments from the public through Dec. 27 ahead of the secretarial certification of supply of the isotope produced without use of highly enriched uranium.
Molybdenum-99 decays into the isotope technetium-99m, which the NNSA said in a Nov. 27 Federal Register notice is employed in 40,000 diagnostic and therapeutic procedures each day in the United States, including for heart-disease diagnosis and cancer treatments. Prior to last year, the United States for decades had depended entirely on foreign sources of Mo-99. A number of U.S. companies aim to rebuild the domestic capacity, but that effort remains in its early stages.
The American Medical Isotopes Act of 2012 set a seven-year deadline after which the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission could no longer issue licenses for export of highly enriched uranium for medical isotope production. The material itself is supplied by the NNSA, the Energy Department’s civilian steward for the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
However, the legal prohibition is dependent on a joint certification by the energy and health and human services secretaries that the United States has an adequate supply of Mo-99 produced without highly enriched uranium to meet patient needs, and thus that export of domestic material is no necessary. Failing that finding, the export prohibition can be pushed back by as much as six years.
The NNSA is seeking comments on six specific questions, including: Does the United States have a sufficient supply of Mo-99 for patient requirements; do existing supplies of Mo-99 produced without HEU satisfy domestic demand; what has led to supply shortages in the U.S.; and how would the export prohibition affect the nation’s Mo-99 supply.
Comments can be submitted by mail to Joan Dix, deputy director of the NNSA’s Office of Conversion, at 1000 Independence Ave. SW, Washington, DC 20585, or by email to [email protected].
