The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards on Monday recommended licensing for construction of a radioisotope production facility in Missouri.
Corvallis, Ore.-based Northwest Medical Isotopes intends to build its plant at the Discovery Ridge Research Park in the city of Columbia for production of molybdenum-99, an isotope that decays into technetium-99m, which is used in scans for heart disease and other health threats.
The United States has no domestic production capacity for molybdenum-99, but several companies hope to build production sites to address that vulnerability. Northwest says its planned facility could meet half the need for mo-99 in North America.
“NWMI has submitted a preliminary design for a facility that addresses hazards associated with the extraction of 99Mo from irradiated targets and the fabrication of targets for irradiation,” Dennis Bley, chairman of the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, wrote in a Nov. 6 letter to NRC Chairman Kristine Svinicki. “Once the design is finalized, the proposed facility can be constructed and licensed for operation with adequate protection of the public health and safety and no undue risk to the environment. A construction permit for the proposed radioisotope production facility can be issued to NWMI.”
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has preliminarily set a hearing on the construction license application for January, spokesman David McIntyre said Wednesday. A decision from the commission would be made some months after that.
Northwest Medical Isotopes has yet to file an operations license application, which would also require review by the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards and then commission approval. The company has indicated it would seek a 30-year license, the NRC spokesman said
Northwest Medical did not respond by deadline to requests for an update on development of its facility.