The University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR) may soon become a vital U.S. supplier of molybdenum-99 (Mo-99).

Along with its partners, Nordion, a business of Sterigenics International, and General Atomics (GA), the facility has submitted a license amendment request (LAR) to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

Calling the move a “critical step,” Nordion stated that the facility could provide “nearly half of U.S. demand for Mo-99, which currently must be imported from outside North America.”

"We will start receiving Mo-99 from MURR in mid-to late-2018," said Phil Larabie, Vice President, Medical Isotopes for Nordion. "Filing this license amendment is a key step in our efforts to stabilize and support the nuclear medicine community in North America and beyond for decades to come."

The substance is critical for a number of health care concerns, including cardiovascular disease and cancer. The most important isotope derived from Mo-99, technetium-99m (Tc-99m), is key to performing over 80 percent of the nearly 50 million nuclear medicine procedures done yearly.

"This LAR submission shows the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that we will have all of the technology, expertise and safety measures needed to begin producing Mo-99 in place and ready to go once approval has been received," said Ralph Butler, executive director of MURR. "As a public research institution, we are proud to play a partnership role with GA and Nordion in helping America secure a new, domestic source of Mo-99."

When approved, the facility will start making Mo-99 via selective gaseous extraction (SGE) – a General Atomics proprietary technology – to extract the isotope from low enriched uranium (LEU) targets.

The technique maximizes specific activity and avoids producing liquid uranium waste.

The Moly-99 will be shipped to Nordion's Ottawa, Ontario, for purification and distribution.

Nordion plans to keep its conventional Mo-99 processing capacity going for about another year to ensure that Mo-99 will be available should there be a global shortage.

MURR, a 10-megawatt reactor, is the largest university research reactor in the U.S. It received a 20-year operating licensing renewal from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission this January after more than 50 years of operation, according to Missouri University publication, The Maneater.

“For MURR to provide a supply of Mo-99 would mean that the country would again have a domestic supply of this really important medical isotope,” MURR Associate Director David Robertson told the publication in February.

There was a major shortage of Mo-99 in 2009, and more recently, a NAS report in September, 2016, warned of another one on the horizon until global suppliers finish plans to expand capacity.

More demand has combined with the efforts to stop using highly enriched uranium (HEU) during Mo-99 production. The U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE/NNSA) is providing funding for research and development of domestic Mo-99 production methods that don't use HEU.

The NAS report noted that at present about 75 percent of the current global supply of Mo-99 for medical use is generated using HEU, and the remaining 25 percent is produced with low enriched uranium (LEU).

Global suppliers of Mo-99 have committed to eliminating the use of HEU in reactor targets and medical isotope production facilities. But the widespread availability of Mo-99 produced with HEU is putting companies that use LEU at a competitive disadvantage.

The potential supply challenge was highlighted when Chalk River went offline in November, 2016.

“This is a very tenuous situation we’re looking at,” Christopher O’Brien, chief of nuclear medicine at the Brant Community Healthcare System in Southern Ontario told The Globe and Mail, as noted by HCB News. “If all the cogs in the wheel run smoothly, we will get by relatively safely. If one of the cogs in the wheel breaks, then the whole system collapses very quickly.”

The Canadian facility in Ottawa, which recently began ramping down production, is 60 years old and scheduled to close completely in 2018.

Other isotope suppliers are lined up to make up the demand — but should there be a major hitch in their production a global shortage could loom.

Should that happen, O'Brien told the paper, “you start to ration.”