One year after Babcock & Wilcox announced that it would seek to produce medical isotopes in the U.S., the company has received a $9 million boost to that project.
The National Nuclear Security Administration has awarded the grant to the Babcock & Wilcox Technical Services Group, one of the company’s operations in Lynchburg. The money will be used to continue developing B&W’s reactor technology for isotope production, B&W announced Monday.
“U.S. government support of this work is highly beneficial in helping the nation establish a more secure domestic source of medical isotopes without using highly enriched uranium,” said S. Robert Cochran, president of the B&W Technical Services Group, in a news release. “We are gratified that the NNSA has recognized the promise of our program and is willing to assist in its continued development.”In January 2009, B&W announced that it would partner with Covidien, a supplier of health care products, to produce the radioactive isotope molybdenum-99. Covidien would use that isotope to make technetium-99m, which is used in procedures that detect or treat cancer, heart disease and other conditions.
B&W planned to have a reactor facility built and operating by 2014. The facility would employ about 60 people and company officials have said that it could be built in Campbell County. However, “we’re still working through the final site selection process,” B&W spokesman Jud Simmons said.
After B&W and Covidien announced their partnership, groups with interests in health care and nuclear security asked Congress to help pay for the project, or clear regulatory hurdles for it.
Nuclear medicine groups were interested because there are no domestic sources of molybdenum-99. Foreign producers are using old reactors that have had unplanned outages in recent years, causing occasional shortages of the isotope.
The project has garnered support from nuclear security interests because molybdenum-99 producers currently use weapons grade uranium. B&W’s project, and a similar project proposed by the University of Missouri-Columbia, would use low enriched uranium.
“NNSA is committed to supporting technology that offers a new path forward for the creation of a reliable, domestic supply of molybdenum-99 without the use of” highly enriched uranium, said NNSA Administrator Thomas D’Agostino, in a news release Monday.
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