The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said it helped South Africa on the road to producing a medical isotope using low-enriched uranium instead of weaponizable highly enriched uranium.
The conversion effort wrapped up in August, allowing the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation’s NTP Radioisotopes SOC to produce the medical isotope molybdenum-99 without highly enriched uranium, the NNSA said in a press release Friday.
“South Africa and NTP Radioisotopes have demonstrated outstanding global leadership in completing this lengthy and technically challenging Mo-99 conversion project,” David Huizenga, NNSA’s acting deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation, said in the release. “NNSA has been extremely pleased to support NTP’s successful efforts to cease HEU-based Mo-99 production while continuing to play a key role in ensuring a reliable global supply of this crucial medical radioisotope.”
Molybdenum-99 is a medical isotope useful for diagnostic imaging: taking pictures of the inside of the human body.
Medical isotopes typically cannot be stockpiled because they decay rapidly, so they must produced constantly from uranium. Historically, most medical isotopes have been derived from highly enriched uranium, which is easier to weaponize than low-enriched uranium.
The NNSA, as part of its roughly $1.8-billion nonproliferation office, helps interested parties produce medical isoptopes from less proliferation-sensitive nuclear material, such as low-enriched uranium.
