Oak Ridge-Tenn.-based Isotek Systems has inked a $254 million contract modification with the Energy Department to continue disposing of uranium-233 (U-233) through 2024 at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).
Isotek has overseen the inventory of U-233 since October 2003, removing the material from Oak Ridge National Laboratory Building 3019.
The 1940’s era building is believed to be the oldest operating nuclear facility in the world,
This contract modification authorizes $254 million to fund Isotek’s continued mission to safely dispose of more than 80% of the remaining U-233 inventory, according to a press release from Isotek parent SNC-Lavalin.
The end date on this DOE Office of Environmental Management contract was already Dec. 31, 2024, but this modification formally authorizes the work and the funding to go forward, an Energy Department spokesperson said in a Tuesday email.
After the contents of the U-233 canisters are downblended, they are put into waste containers and shipped to a low-level radioactive waste disposal site, the DOE spokesperson said.
So far, about half of the inventory has been removed from Building 3019 and sent to disposal. The Energy Department declined to identify the disposal site.
The overall contract, executed in 2003 is worth almost $557 million, according to a regularly updated roundup of agreements administered by the DOE Office of Environmental Management.
Isotek’s work at Oak Ridge plays an important role in cancer research, the Energy Department has said. Isotek removes thorium-229 from the uranium-233 at the lab and sells it to TerraPower, a nuclear company co-founded by Microsoft’s Bill Gates. The thorium will be sent to a TerraPower-owned laboratory near Seattle. TerraPower will extract actinium-225 from the material for use in cancer treatment research.
TerraPower is only receiving gram quantities of Thorium-229 to extract medical isotopes, while DOE is responsible for downblending and disposing the full inventory of U-233 stored in Oak Ridge, the DOE spokesperson said.
The processing campaign underway handles about 80% of the remaining U-233 inventory. The other 20% is comprised of a different material form that might require additional processing equipment before it is disposed, the DOE representative said.
