George F. Vandegrift, Chemical Sciences and Engineering Division, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Ave, Argonne, IL 60439

Molybdenum 99 (Mo-99) is the most commonly used medical isotope in the world; with an estimated usage of 20-25 million procedures performed annually using its daughter, Tc-99m. Most is now produced by irradiating highly enriched uranium (HEU) targets. The continuing use of HEU presents a threat to U.S. national security for two reasons—(1) HEU in the commercial sector is a target for theft by terrorists, which need ~25 kg to make a crude nuclear device, and (2) there is currently no domestic production of this critical radioisotope. The U.S. depends on foreign sources, principally Canada for its medical needs. The Canadian firm, MDS Nordion uses about 25 kg of U.S.-origin HEU annually for its Mo-99 production. Other major producers are IRE (Belgium), Mallinckrodt (The Netherlands), and NTP (South Africa); they also use HEU targets. Two smaller producers, CNEA (Argentina) and ANSTO (Australia), use low-enriched uranium (LEU).

Argonne National Laboratory, which is funded through the National Nuclear Security Agency's Global Threat Reduction-Conversion program, is assisting both current and future producers to use LEU rather than HEU for Mo-99 production. Part of this effort is directed toward assisting two potential domestic producers, (1) the University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR), which is planning to use the Argonne-developed annular LEU-foil target and the LEU-Modified Cintichem process and (2) the Babcock & Wilcox Technical Services Group, which is developing the use of the Medical Isotope Production System (MIPS), which recovers Mo-99 from the fuel of an LEU-fueled aqueous homogeneous reactor.

This talk will discuss challenges and solutions to producing Mo-99 from LEU vs. HEU and progress for doing so in the United States and in the world.

Work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration's (NNSA's) Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation, under Contract DE-AC02-06CH11357.

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