Karl Herchenroeder
RW Monitor
01/22/16
The Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 7 is urging the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to consider all significant environmental impacts before licensing Northwest Medical Isotopes’ plan to build a medical isotope reactor in Columbia, Mo. The Clean Air Act dictated that the agency submit the comments.
Northwest plans to build the $50 million facility at Discovery Ridge Research Park, with operations tentatively scheduled to start this year. The reactor is projected to satisfy half of North America’s needs for molybdenum-99, a medical isotope used in imaging procedures for cancer, heart disease, and bone and kidney disease.
EPA Region 7, which covers the Midwest, sent the letter to the NRC on Jan. 4, stating that the likelihood of a transportation accident involving moly-99 and the potential for groundwater contamination can increase risks to sensitive populations. However, the EPA said that if the medical isotope is in short supply and has a pronounced effect on human health, those factors should also be considered.
“EPA recommends objectively analyzing both positive and negative aspects so that the decision maker can easily choose the preferred alternative,” the letter states.
The agency also recommended the NRC consider storage of the material, job creation, reduction of greenhouse gases, and impact on threatened and endangered species.
With Canada’s National Research Universal reactor scheduled to shut down in March 2018, supply of moly-99 in North America is uncertain. According to NRC spokesman David McIntyre, the commission did not receive any other comments on the matter by the Jan. 4 deadline.
SHINE Medical Technologies also plans to build a radioisotope production facility. The $100 million Janesville, Wis., facility is expected to satisfy more than half the U.S. demand for moly-99, and is scheduled for completion in 2018. Earlier this month, SHINE announced that it had raised $11.5 million in private funding, bringing the total amount raised, between public and private sources, to $50 million.
