facility that produces medical isotopes for hospitals.
It's also a nuclear site that works with highly-enriched uranium (HEU). Medical isotope production is an acknowledged nuclear proliferation threat.
At present, there are no producers of Mo-99 for medical use4 in the United States. Almost all of the Mo-99 used worldwide is produced by just four companies, all using HEU targets:
MDS-Nordion, which is located in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, obtains Mo-99 under an agreement with Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), which is located at Chalk River, Canada;
Mallinckrodt5 near Petten, the Netherlands, extracts Mo-99 from targets irradiated in three European reactors;
Institut National des Radioéléments (IRE) near Fleurus, Belgium, extracts Mo-99 from targets irradiated in three European reactors; and
Nuclear Technology Products (NTP) Radioisotopes extracts Mo-99 from targets irradiated in a reactor near Pelindaba, South Africa.
Approximately 40–50 kg of HEU are used annually for medical isotope production (NNSA and ANSTO, 20076 ), including annual U.S. exports of about 15.5 kg of HEU to Canada.
[...] The mandate for this study reflects an effort by the U.S. Congress to balance two competing national interests: first, to ensure the continued availability of reasonably priced medical isotopes in the United States; and second, to prevent the proliferation of HEU, which could be diverted for malevolent use in nuclear explosive devices (Sidebar 1.1). A brief history of congressional actions on HEU use for medical isotope production is provided in Sidebar 1.3. Kuperman (2005, 2006) explores the motivations for and possible consequences of these actions.