The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has acceded to a request to halt its review of a license amendment request intended to advance a project for production of the medical isotope molybdenum-99 at the University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR).
The request from the university was filed on April 5, one day after Canadian health science company Nordion announced it would withdraw from the isotope manufacturing partnership with MURR and General Atomics. In an April 17 response, posted to the NRC’s website this week, the regulator said it had terminated the review.
“At some point in time could we resubmit that request? Yes. Is that going to happen? I don’t have that crystal ball,” Ken Brooks, an associate director at MURR, told RadWaste Monitor.
Brooks referred questions about the future of the project as a whole to General Atomics. The San Diego-based technology company declined to comment.
The United States has no domestic production capacity for molybdenum-99 (mo-99), which decays into technetium-99m, an isotope employed in over 80 percent of all nuclear medicine procedures. A number of U.S. companies are working to provide that production.
In February 2015, General Atomics, Nordion, and MURR announced a partnership for production of a reliable supply of molybdenum-99 starting in 2017. The plan was to use General Atomics’ selective gas extraction technology at the reactor to produce the isotope using low-enriched uranium – rather than the highly enriched uranium that could pose a nuclear proliferation threat if obtained by bad actors.
Nordion would provide long-established experience in production of the isotope, including purification operatons. The company needed a new supplier as its then-current mo-99 provider, Canada’s National Research Universal reactor, prepared to shut down.
The National Nuclear Security Administration, a semiautonomous branch of the Department of Energy that counts nuclear nonproliferation among its missions, provided millions of dollars in funding for the Nordion-General Atomics-MURR project.
Smaller-scale experiments allowed at MURR under its existing NRC license were promising, Brooks said. The university in May 2017 requested the license amendment that would allow it to add hot cells and associated equipment at the reactor for an experiment to produce large quantities of mo-99.
Less than a year later, Nordion said it would exit the partnership due to unspecified schedule delays and cost increases. The Canadian company’s parent firm, Ohio-based Sotera Health, then announced on April 17 it would sell Nordion’s medical isotopes business to BWX Technologies.
Nordion has formally withdrawn from a cooperative agreement with MURR and General Atomics to develop the production system and a 20-year service agreement with the university.
The news has been better in other MURR partnerships, Brooks noted. Wisconsin-based NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes already manufactures test amounts of mo-99 at MURR, and in February received FDA approval of its RadioGenix production system. At least for the next few years, the company’s production operations would remain at the Missouri reactor.
