The National Nuclear Security Administration said Thursday it had sealed follow-on agreements with three companies to complete its share of funding for their respective molybdenum-99 production projects.
The deals ensure that SHINE Medical Technologies, NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes, and General Atomics will each receive the full $25 million from the agency for development of technologies to produce the key medical isotope without needing nuclear weapon-usable highly enriched uranium. The cost-sharing agreements require the businesses to put up an equal amount of funding, for a total of $50 million.
Molybdenum-99 decays into technetium-99m, which the NNSA said is employed in roughly 80 percent of nuclear medicine procedures, including 50,000 procedures daily in the United States. The United States currently has no domestic production capacity, and there have been fears of a shortage of mo-99 following the November shutdown of the National Research Universal (NRU) reactor in Ontario, Canada, one of the world’s largest suppliers of the isotope.
The NNSA, meanwhile, has also been looking for proliferation-resistant forms of production of mo-99.
SHINE is developing an accelerator with low-enriched uranium fission technology, according to the NNSA release. The latest funding award will help the Wisconsin company design and construct a radioisotope production facility in the city of Janesville. SHINE received a construction permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in February following a four-year process of safety and environmental data collection and review. It hopes to begin production at the $100 million facility in 2019.
Wisconsin-based NorthStar is also working on an accelerator system, the NNSA said. In addition, its work on a separate neutron activation technology for mo-99 production has already received full funding of $25 million from the agency, a semiautonomous branch of the U.S. Energy Department.
Finally, San Diego-based General Atomics is developing a low-enriched uranium fission technology in partnership with Sterigenics International subsidiary Nordion and the University of Missouri Research Reactor Center. The partners hope to establish a commercial supply of mo-99 by mid-to-late 2018.
The companies had announced their latest funding awards at different points this month.
“NNSA is pleased to see continued progress of these important efforts,” said Anne Harrington, NNSA deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation, said in the release. “We are happy to achieve the funding milestone marking the full $25 million NNSA award for each project, and we look forward to seeing this important isotope produced in the United States without the use of HEU, and ensuring a reliable supply is available to meet U.S. patient needs.”
The NNSA awards are being funded incrementally, with all remaining money expected to be disbursed to the companies by the end of 2018, according to agency spokeswoman Francie Israeli.
