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The project provides the capacity to produce 500,000 cancer treatment doses per year instead of 4000
Progress in production of isotopes from US legacy wastePersonally, I object to calling useful valuable materials "waste," but I'll leave that aside for a moment.
Excerpts:
Some 75-100 times more doses of next generation alpha targeted therapy treatments will be available annually worldwide, compared with today, through a project to produce isotopes from legacy nuclear material at the US Department of Energy's (DOE's) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the project partners say.
Since 2003, Isotek has been responsible for safely and securely overseeing the inventory of uranium-233 and preparing its removal from ORNL. Since then, employees have transferred and dispositioned about half of the inventory. The remaining inventory requires processing and downblending prior to disposal, which began in October 2019.
Isotek Systems (a subsidiary of Atkins Nuclear Secured), TerraPower and the DOE entered a public-private partnership in 2018. Through this partnership, Isotek is extracting the rare medical isotope thorium-229 for TerraPower Isotopes, a subsidiary of TerraPower, to advance promising cancer treatment research.
In 2021, TerraPower signed a collaboration agreement with Cardinal Health NPHS to produce and distribute TerraPower's actinium-225 product, which is generated using the thorium-229 extracted in ORNL. Actinium-225 will be used in drug trials involving targeted therapy for diseases such as breast, prostate, colon and neuroendocrine cancers as well as melanoma and lymphoma.
Isotek reinvested funds it received from TerraPower into the project, helping accelerate the work and begin processing uranium-233 sooner. Isotek purchased gloveboxes that allowed workers to begin processing canisters with lower levels of radiation. That approach enabled the extraction and delivery of rare isotopes quicker. This processing campaign, known as the Thorium Express Project, ran from 2019-2021...
...The project provides the capacity to produce 500,000 cancer treatment doses per year. Currently there are only 4000 doses of these lifesaving therapies, known as targeted alpha therapy, available worldwide.
"This partnership is a success for all involved," said Jay Mullis, manager of DOE's Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management. "Through Isotek's innovative approach, we are able to accelerate one of our highest priority projects, spend less taxpayer dollars to complete the project and provide material that will greatly benefit the public in the future."
"Being able to extract potentially lifesaving medical isotopes prior to dispositioning highly enriched material is precisely what we mean when we say we engineer a better future for our planet and its people," said Joe St Julian, President, Nuclear, SNC-Lavalin. "This has created an aspiring mission for everyone involved. We are honoured to be assisting the DOE with this historic achievement..."
Since 2003, Isotek has been responsible for safely and securely overseeing the inventory of uranium-233 and preparing its removal from ORNL. Since then, employees have transferred and dispositioned about half of the inventory. The remaining inventory requires processing and downblending prior to disposal, which began in October 2019.
Isotek Systems (a subsidiary of Atkins Nuclear Secured), TerraPower and the DOE entered a public-private partnership in 2018. Through this partnership, Isotek is extracting the rare medical isotope thorium-229 for TerraPower Isotopes, a subsidiary of TerraPower, to advance promising cancer treatment research.
In 2021, TerraPower signed a collaboration agreement with Cardinal Health NPHS to produce and distribute TerraPower's actinium-225 product, which is generated using the thorium-229 extracted in ORNL. Actinium-225 will be used in drug trials involving targeted therapy for diseases such as breast, prostate, colon and neuroendocrine cancers as well as melanoma and lymphoma.
Isotek reinvested funds it received from TerraPower into the project, helping accelerate the work and begin processing uranium-233 sooner. Isotek purchased gloveboxes that allowed workers to begin processing canisters with lower levels of radiation. That approach enabled the extraction and delivery of rare isotopes quicker. This processing campaign, known as the Thorium Express Project, ran from 2019-2021...
...The project provides the capacity to produce 500,000 cancer treatment doses per year. Currently there are only 4000 doses of these lifesaving therapies, known as targeted alpha therapy, available worldwide.
"This partnership is a success for all involved," said Jay Mullis, manager of DOE's Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management. "Through Isotek's innovative approach, we are able to accelerate one of our highest priority projects, spend less taxpayer dollars to complete the project and provide material that will greatly benefit the public in the future."
"Being able to extract potentially lifesaving medical isotopes prior to dispositioning highly enriched material is precisely what we mean when we say we engineer a better future for our planet and its people," said Joe St Julian, President, Nuclear, SNC-Lavalin. "This has created an aspiring mission for everyone involved. We are honoured to be assisting the DOE with this historic achievement..."
The inventory of U-233 at Oak Ridge is far more valuable than the article suggests, particularly in preventing cancer if used to displace carcinogenic dangerous fossil fuels. U-233 is the only actinide that has a large enough value of neutron multiplicity in general to be a breeder fuel in thermal reactors, albeit only in heavy water reactors like the marvelous CANDUs in Canada that will be and have been supplying clean energy in Canada for the bulk of the 21st century. U-233, in certain kinds of fuels can increase the "burn up," of nuclear fuels (equivalent to gas mileage) to rather high levels in these reactors.
I am not up to date on the policies for handling this valuable resource at Oak Ridge, but one hopes wisdom will prevail.
