Vital medical isotope is used in over 40,000 medical procedures in the United States each day
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE/NNSA) has issued its fourth and final cooperative agreement award in Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 to Northwest Medical Isotopes, LLC, located in Corvallis, Oregon, for the production of molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) without the use of highly enriched uranium. Three other cooperative agreement awards were announced in July to the following:
Niowave, Inc., located in Lansing, Michigan
NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes, LLC, located in Beloit, Wisconsin
SHINE Medical Technologies, located in Janesville, Wisconsin
Technetium-99m, an isotope derived from Mo-99, is used in over 40,000 medical diagnostic procedures in the United States each day, including the diagnosis of heart disease and cancer. DOE/NNSA is supporting the establishment of a reliable supply of Mo-99 produced in the United States without the use of highly enriched uranium. To achieve this, the United States is supporting companies to have the capacity to supply approximately 3,000 six-day curies of Mo-99 per week.
The American Medical Isotopes Production Act of 2012 directed DOE/NNSA to implement a technology-neutral program, in cooperation with non-Federal entities. Congress appropriated $40 million for these awards in FY 2018 and $20 million in FY 2019 and directed the Department to issue a Funding Opportunity Announcement to competitively award cooperative agreements. NNSA will fund each agreement at $15 million and require each awardee to provide $15 million of matching funds.
More information on DOE/NNSA efforts to establish a reliable supply of Mo‑99 without the use of HEU:
NNSA’s Molybdenum-99 Program: Establishing a Reliable Supply of Mo-99 Produced Without Highly Enriched Uranium
National Nuclear Security Administration
As part of its mission to minimize the use of highly enriched uranium (HEU), NNSA’s Office of Material Management and Minimization was tasked to lead the Molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) program. Mo-99 is an isotope that is used in over 40,000 medical procedures in the United States each day, but is 100% supplied by foreign vendors, most of which use HEU in the production process.
NNSA is working with commercial partners to accelerate the establishment of a redundant, reliable supply of Mo-99 in the United States, produced without HEU. The decay product of Mo-99, technetium-99m (Tc-99m), is used to diagnose heart disease and cancer, to study organ structure and function, and to perform other important medical applications. For example, patients undergoing a common procedure—the cardiac “stress test”—likely have benefited from Tc-99m.
Mo-99 is produced mainly in aging research reactors that have experienced an increased frequency of unplanned outages in recent years. Some of these outages have caused global Mo-99 supply shortages, in some cases forcing hospitals to delay critical patient treatment. NNSA has worked since 2009 to accelerate commercial production of Mo-99 in the United States by supporting a variety of innovative technologies that do not use HEU, a mission made all the more urgent with the shutdown of Canada’s National Research Universal reactor—historically the United States’ largest supplier—in late 2016.
NNSA aims to create a redundant, reliable commercial Mo-99 supply network that avoids a single point of failure that does not use HEU. This effort requires strong cooperation and coordination among government, industry, and the medical community. The ultimate goal of the Mo-99 program is to ensure that this important medical isotope is readily available to meet patient needs, and is produced in accordance with U.S. nuclear nonproliferation policy by eliminating the use of proliferation-sensitive HEU.
To support the development of non-HEU-based Mo-99 production in the United States, NNSA first issued using cooperative agreements in 2010 that provided up to $25 million in matching funds, based on a 50/50 cost-share between NNSA and the U.S. commercial partners. NNSA’s currently has initial cooperative agreements were with three partners for four projects: Northstar Medical Radioisotopes (two projects), SHINE Medical Technologies, and General Atomics. A key pillar of the program is NNSA’s technology-neutral approach, which recognizes that a successful solution to prevent a shortage of Mo-99 is more likely to be found through the parallel development of several production technologies.
NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes is developing both neutron capture and accelerator-based technologies, which will utilize NorthStar’s proprietary RadioGenixTM Tc-99m Generating System.
SHINE Medical Technologies is developing accelerator technology to produce Mo-99 with accelerator-based low enriched uranium (LEU) fission.
General Atomics is working with the Missouri University Research Reactor and Nordion to produce fission-based Mo-99 from an LEU target using selective gas extraction (SGE) technology.
In 2018, NNSA issued a new Funding Opportunity Announcement for the production of Mo-99 without the use of HEU. In February 2019, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry announced that four U.S. companies to begin negotiations for potential new cooperative agreement awards:
NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes, LLC, located in Beloit, Wisconsin
SHINE Medical Technologies, located in Janesville, Wisconsin Northwest
Medical Isotopes, located in Corvallis, Oregon
Niowave, Inc., located in Lansing, Michigan
NNSA also makes technical expertise from the National Laboratories available, on a non-proprietary basis, to existing and potential Mo-99 producers who seek assistance in converting their Mo-99 production processes to use LEU targets or to develop non-HEU-based Mo-99 production technologies.
NNSA also funds National Laboratories to advance industry efforts to produce Mo-99 domestically without HEU. In 2019, NNSA is funding national lab work in support of NorthStar, SHINE, Northwest Medical Isotopes, Niowave, as well as: BWXT Isotope Technology Group, COQUI Radio Pharmaceuticals, Global Medical Isotope Systems, and Magneto Inertial Fusion Technologies Inc.