BWX Technologies, known primarily as a contractor for the Defense and Energy departments, said Tuesday it plans to acquire a medical isotopes business from a Canadian health company.
Pending regulatory approvals in the United States and Canada, BWXT hopes by the end of this year to complete its buyout of Nordion’s medical isotopes operation. Nordion, headquartered in Ottawa, is a branch of Ohio-based Sotera Health.
“It will be a new line of business for us,” Jonathan Cirtain, BWXT’s vice president of advanced technologies, told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing. “However, what a lot of folks don’t realize is that we’ve been manufacturing targets for medical isotopes for a number of years, and we’ve been working on technology maturation with the Department of Energy for a number of years for medical isotope manufacturing. So we’re fairly familiar with this market.”
The Lynchburg, Va.-based company did not release terms of the deal, which will encompass roughly 150 Nordion employees and two facilities: a radiochemical and contract manufacturing operation in Kanata, Ontario, and a medical isotope site in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Nordion produces four medical isotopes, according to its website: iridium-111, iodine-123, palladium-103, and strontium-82. The products are used in medical diagnostics, research, treatment of prostate cancer, and other purposes.
Earlier this month, Nordion withdrew from a partnership with General Atomics and the University of Missouri Research Reactor to develop commercial-scale production of the isotope molybdenum-99 via selective gas extraction technology. At the time, Nordion said its decision was based on the rising cost and schedule delays facing the project.
Cirtain said that Nordion’s decision was made independently, but that BWXT would not join the project.
“We had previously announced our plans to enter the medical radioisotope market with a new technology, and the acquisition of the Nordion facilities is an important step in that direction,” he said. “It’s our long-term plan to invest in the growth of the medical isotope business to include additional isotopes. The specifics of our technology is something we’re going to disclose a little bit later.”
