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Updated: TerraPower, Isotek extracting cancer treatment materials from U-233 at ORNL

Posted at 11:50 am November 22, 2019
By John Huotari Leave a Comment

DOE EM ORNL Pumping Uranyl Nitrate Solution into Resin Columns
TerraPower, a company that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates helped launch in 2006, is working with Isotek Systems LLC, a federal cleanup contractor in Oak Ridge, to extract rare isotopes from nuclear materials for cancer treatment and research. Pictured above is a uranyl nitrate solution being pumped into resin columns. (Photo courtesy U.S. Department of Energy Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management)

Note: This story was last updated at 10:30 a.m. Nov. 25.

A company that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates helped launch in 2006 is working with a federal cleanup contractor in Oak Ridge to extract rare isotopes from nuclear materials for cancer treatment research.

The project will significantly increase the number of cancer treatment doses available each year, federal officials and company executives said Friday. It will help remove highly enriched fissile nuclear material from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and save taxpayers an estimated $90 million, the officials and executives said. And it will recycle an isotope that would otherwise be “irretrievably lost” as the nuclear material, uranium-233, is converted into a disposal-ready form.

The U.S. Department of Energy, Isotek Systems LLC, and TerraPower celebrated with an announcement of the project in Oak Ridge on Friday morning.

TerraPower, which is based in Bellevue, Washington, where Gates is chairman, is particularly interested in actinium-225. That isotope can be extracted from thorium-229. The thorium will be removed from the fissile material, the uranium-233 stored at ORNL, by the federal cleanup contractor, Isotek.

The unique agreement, a public-private partnership, is expected to allow TerraPower the ability to make 100 times more actinium-225-based cancer treatment doses per year than the 4,000 doses that are currently available worldwide. TerraPower could first offer actinium-225 in late 2020, company executives said.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Business, DOE, Oak Ridge, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management, Slider Tagged With: actinium-225, alpha particles, alpha-emitting isotope, Atkins, Bill Gates, Building 3019, cancer treatment, Chris Levesque, Chuck Fleischmann, DOE, Isotek Systems LLC, isotope, Jay Mullis, Jeff Latkowski, Jim Bolon, monoclonal antibodies, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management, ORNL, Sandy Taylor, SNC-Lavalin, TerraPower, thorium-229, U.S. Department of Energy, uranium-233

Cleanup workers start processing U-233 powder at ORNL

Posted at 5:43 pm October 22, 2019
By Oak Ridge Today Staff Leave a Comment

Oak Ridge U-233 Glovebox Installation Oct 2019
Workers at Oak Ridge install new gloveboxes to begin processing a portion of uranium-233 a year ahead of schedule. (Photo courtesy U.S. Department of Energy Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management)

Workers have begun processing a powder form of uranium-233 a year ahead of schedule as part of a larger environmental management, or cleanup, project to process and dispose of the remaining inventory of the nuclear material stored at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

It’s the highest priority cleanup project at ORNL, a U.S. Department of Energy laboratory.

Isotek is the contractor responsible for processing and disposing of the uranium-233 inventory at ORNL. The work eliminates the need to use Building 3019, which is the oldest operating nuclear facility in the world, for storage of the material, according to DOE’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management, or OREM.

In the 1970s and 1980s, nuclear facilities sent liquid uranium-233 to ORNL, and the site converted it into an oxide form, known as Oak Ridge Oxide, which is more stable for storage, OREM said in an “EM Update” newsletter published Tuesday. Some of the material was shipped to facilities for use as fuel in reactors. However, most of it was stored at ORNL until workers were able to dispose of it.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Front Page News, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management, Top Stories Tagged With: Building 3019, DOE, environmental management, Isotek, Jim Bolon, nuclear material, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management, Oak Ridge Oxide, ORNL, Sarah Schaefer, U-233, U.S. Department of Energy, uranium-233

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