The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) said Wednesday it had completed the last of four new funding agreements for private manufacturing of the medical isotope molybdenum-99.
This means Northwest Medical Isotopes, of Corvallis, Ore., will now receive $15 million from the NNSA that it must fully match.
The announcement comes almost five weeks after the semiautonomous Department of Energy agency said it had set same-sized cooperative agreements with three other firms: Niowave, of Lansing, Mich.; NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes, of Beloit, Wis.; and SHINE Medical Technologies, of Janesville, Wis.
Northwest Medical Chief Operating Officer Carolyn Haass declined to discuss the delay in the federal deal for the company, except to say it involved “an action item that DOE forgot to follow-up until the last minute.”
In a statement Friday, the NNSA said “There is no designated timeframe on how long a negotiation for a cooperative agreement will take. Each negotiation is company-specific and negotiation timeframes can vary.”
In May 2018, Northwest Medical received approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build its molybdenum-99 production plant in Columbia, Mo. The company aims to complete the design for the facility, along with the operations license application for the NRC, by early next year, Haass said. The NNSA funding would be used to help bring the production plant to hot operations by early 2023, she added.
All four companies will submit monthly invoices to the NNSA to be reimbursed for expenses under the cooperative agreements. The deadline for covered costs is July 2022, the agency said.
Molybdenum-99 decays into the isotope technetium-99m, which the NNSA said is employed in more than 40,000 medical diagnostic procedures daily in the United States. The NNSA is supporting domestic efforts to produce the isotope without use of highly enriched uranium, which powers reactors that generate molybdenum-99 but also could be diverted for nuclear weapons.
In its fiscal 2020 budget plan, the White House requested $10 million for ongoing national laboratory technical support for commercial Mo-99 production without highly enriched uranium. “Future requests for Mo-99 funding will be reviewed on an annual basis,” the NNSA said.
