The medical isotope crisis - European Nuclear Society

http://www.euronuclear.org/1-information/news/medical-isotope-crisis.htm

Status of Production Facilities in Operation

The crisis points to the alarming lack of production facilities for reactor produced medical isotopes.

• In Canada, the NRU reactor started operating in 1957. The NRU reactor was scheduled to close down in 2005. AECL therefore designed and constructed two reactors dedicated to isotope production, Maple 1 and 2. Maple 1 was supposed to be operational by 1999. Due to major design errors, the operation of the reactors would have been unsafe. After several years of tests and design changes, AECL decided to stop the Maple project in 2008.  Due to this, the operating licence of the NRU may be prolonged after 2011, even though it is now one of the oldest reactors still in operation worldwide. It is expected that the mandatory safety upgrades will require the NRU to be shut down for at least 1 year in the near future. Mid-February 2009, the NRU reactor was shut down once again for a few days due to a problem with the mechanism that extracts isotope-containing rods from the reactor. . The reactor was shut down mid-May because of a heavy water leak inducing Tritium releases through the ventilation system. The inspection programme of the reactor vessel has been performed, the analysis of the inspection data is in progress and the repair programme is under preparation. At this time, AECL expects the NRU to be restarted during the first calendar quarter of 2010.
• In France, OSIRIS will be shut down when the Jules Horowitz reactor (JHR) becomes operational. This is expected to be the case in 2014-2015. There should therefore be no discontinuity in irradiation facilities in France provided that the price asked for irradiating U targets in the JHR is commercially acceptable. In case of a long-lasting crisis, ORPHEE could also be used to produce radioisotopes for nuclear medicine. In 2009-2010, OSIRIS will undergo major maintenance work to allow its operation until 2015. An extended shutdown period of 5 months is foreseen in 2010.
• In Belgium, BR2 is scheduled to operate at least until 2016 and there is no technical reason to stop its operation before 2020 at the earliest, provided that adequate fuel remains available and that the licensing authorities agree. At that time another multipurpose irradiation facility, MYRRHA, a multifunctional accelerator driven subcritical system (ADS), or ADONIS, a dedicated ADS, should be able to ensure continuous Mo-99 production.
• In The Netherlands, after having been stopped for about six months due to corrosion problems, the HFR has been authorised by the Dutch regulatory authority to remain operational for an interim year until 1 March 2010 to allow for preparation of repairs. These operations are expected to last several months and scheduled to begin no later than in February 2010. In the meantime NRG is in the process of designing PALLAS as the replacement for the HFR reactor. The official target date for it is 2016, probable date at which the HFR will be stopped, but well informed sources doubt that this deadline is realistic as no formal decision concerning the construction or funding has been taken yet.