Abstract
As the global shortage of radioactive isotopes used for medical imaging diagnostics worsens, the Department of Energy has given grants to two firms to further develop new sources for the materials. The National Nuclear Security Administration, an arm of DOE, awarded $9 million to engineering firm Babcock & Wilcox and $2.3 million to nuclear reactor maker GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy. Both firms say they will match the awards to develop domestic sources for the isotopes, which are used in 20 million U.S. procedures, such as heart-stress scans and blood-flow monitoring, each year. Two aging reactors, one in Canada and one in the Netherlands, currently supply the bulk of the U.S.’s demand for molybdenum-99, the raw material for medical isotope technetium-99m. Supply from these reactors has been severely constrained recently (C&EN, Aug. 24, 2009, page 9). Ross Thomas, chief technical officer for Babcock & Wilcox, says the firm is adapting a decades-old reactor design that ...
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