Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
5/8/2015
NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes announced this week the successful first production-scale test run of molybdenum-99 from its system at the University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR) in Columbia, Mo. Following the test run at the reactor, NorthStar then shipped the material to its Madison, Wis., facility, another milestone for the company’s production process. “This week’s events proved that NorthStar, working in concert with MURR, can seamlessly produce, package and ship customers’ orders of Mo-99,” said James Harvey, NorthStar senior vice president and chief science officer. According to the company, the Mo-99 aliquoting system filled several depleted uranium source vessels and one tungsten source vessel with Mo-99 on May 4. On May 5, the package, made up of 400 curies of Mo-99, arrived in good condition for inspection and recycling in Madison.
NorthStar is developing two technologies for producing Mo-99 without the use of highly enriched uranium, including a neutron capture process using the MURR facility and an electron accelerator process. The United States, through the National Nuclear Security Administration, has instituted a cost-sharing agreement with NorthStar and SHINE Medical to help jump start the domestic production of Mo-99. Both companies expect to begin production sometime near the end of 2016 or early 2017, depending on how quickly they can navigate the regulatory process.
With Canada set to stop government spending in 2016 on the National Research Universal (NRU) reactor, one of the world’s largest suppliers of molybdenum-99 and technetium-99m, the medical isotope industry is expecting a shortage in the market in the coming years, opening a potentially lucrative opportunity to satisfy the market for the medical isotope used in millions of procedures annually. NRU’s anticipated shutdown has led to a slew of startups looking to fill the lucrative medical isotope void—eight-to-nine companies have already sent the Nuclear Regulatory Commission letters of intent to submit construction authorization licenses for a potential Mo-99 production facility. Most of the companies have a timeline to reach production capabilities between late 2016 and early 2017.
