The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Thursday authorized Northwest Medical Isotopes (NWMI) to build a molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) production facility in Missouri.
“We find that, with respect to the safety and environmental issues before us, the Staff’s review of NWMI’s construction permit application was sufficient to support issuance of the construction permit. We authorize the Director of the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation to issue the permit for the construction of the NWMI Medical Radioisotope Production Facility,” the commission said in its memorandum and order.
The decision follows the commission’s hearing on the application in January, after NWMI had cleared NRC staff safety and environmental reviews and the agency’s Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards.
As discussed during the review process, the Corvallis, Ore., company will be required to provide the NRC with the results of a geotechnical survey of its construction site in Columbia, Mo., prior to the beginning of construction. The study is intended to rule out the danger of sinkholes in the area.
Northwest Medical Isotopes is one of several companies aiming to revive the United States’ commercial production capacity for molybdenum-99, which it has lacked since 1989. The isotope decays into technetium-99m, which is used in over 80 percent of all nuclear medicine procedures.
The company plans to break ground on the facility in the third quarter of the year on 7.4 acres at the Discovery Ridge Research Park, NWMI Chief Operating Officer Carolyn Haass said by email Friday. The NRC approval arrived later than expected, pushing back anticipated completion of construction to from 2019 to 2020, she said.
Northwest Medical Isotopes would need a separate NRC license to operate its facility, which it hopes to open in early 2021. Management plans to submit its operations license application near the end of 2018. It will feature a safety evaluation report, final design, technical details, and plans for operations, emergenies, and physical security, Haass said.
Once operational, the facility could provide 50 percent of North America’s mo-99 need, the company has said. The plant would be designed to produce up to 2,500 6-day curies of the isotope each week, according to management. Its process would involve low-enriched uranium (LEU), rather than highly enriched uranium that, if obtained by rogue actors, could pose a proliferation threat. Low-enriched uranium targets irradiated at partnering reactors would be returned to the NWMI plant for recovery of the isotope and recycling of the uranium.
The NRC has already issued a construction permit to one other molybdenum-99 venture: SHINE Medical Technologies, which wants to open a $100 million isotope production plant in Janesville, Wis. The company is expected to apply for its operations license by the end of 2018, an NRC spokesman said in April. The agency would then conduct an acceptance review of the application over up to 60 days, with the full technical review lasting about two years.
“The staff would need to assess the application’s scope, completeness and complexity before developing a more detailed review schedule and estimated level of effort and cost,” according to the spokesman.
