A new contract modification will enable the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office in Oak Ridge, Tenn., to participate in a cancer research arrangement.
The Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) said a third-party medical company – whose name was not disclosed – will “milk” thorium from uranium stores at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The Department of Energy approved the contract modification between OREM and Isotek, the Department of Energy’s contractor for uranium disposition at ORNL, at the end of 2017 after the office’s 45-day review, an assessment that allows Environmental Management offices around the country to find areas for improvement.
ORNL’s uranium-233 was created by a thorium fuel cycle that co-produces hazardous uranium-232. Much of the U-233 stores are left over from the laboratory’s 1964 molten salt reactor experiment. Metals, oxide powders, and contaminated materials from old glove boxes and reactor plates also exist within ORNL’s Building 3019.
OREM Manager Jay Mullis said the office can use ion exchange to extract thorium from the uranium left in the building and hand it—and its ion exchange waste—over to Isotek, which would sell it to the medical research company. The medical group would take responsibility of any waste from the ion exchange columns used to extract the thorium, in a deal Mullis called a win-win-win.
The research company will use the thorium to produce an element called actinium, which can be used for cancer treatment. The funds pay Isotek, whih will allow OREM to borrow the money to get a jump on the disposition program without any layoffs. Then, Mullis said, the Oak Ridge office will pay Isotek back over time. which will allow OREM to use the money to give the waste disposition program a five-year jump—without any layoffs.
