Mike Nartker
RW Monitor
5/22/2015
Senate appropriators are looking to have the National Nuclear Security Administration come up with a plan to have new domestic sources of molybdenum-99 up and running in the next 18 months. In the report accompanying the Senate version of the FY 2016 Energy and Water Appropriations bill, reported out of committee this week, lawmakers would direct the NNSA to develop a plan by Jan. 31, 2016, on how it will assure that at least two domestic sources of molybdenum-99 are in “commercial distribution” by the start of 2018. “The Committee remains concerns about the development of domestic supplies of the medial isotope Mo-99 to a schedule necessary to assure the public health and meet the expectations set forth in the Committee’s fiscal year 2015 report,” says the report accompanying the FY16 bill.
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. 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.
Among the companies working to develop new Mo-99 production facilities are NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes and SHINE Medical Technologies, each of which have cost-share agreements with the NNSA, under which the agency provides up to $25 million. NorthStar is developing both neutron capture and accelerator-based technologies, which will utilize NorthStar’s RadioGenixTM Tc-99m Generating System, according to a NNSA fact sheet, while SHINE Medical Technologies is developing accelerator technology with LEU fission. Earlier this month, NorthStar announced the successful first production-scale test run of Mo-99 from its system at the University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR) in Columbia, Mo.
