From the June 2011 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


The supply chain is only as strong as . . .
At the time of this writing, the NRU is offline for repairs yet again, in this case, routine maintenance, but rather than the typical five-day shutdown, this shutdown will span nearly five weeks. Still, it’s not the catastrophe of 2009, since this was not a forced shutdown and it’s also (at least currently) not coinciding with a long shutdown of any of the five plants that produce most of the world’s Mo-99. But the fact remains, whether the shutdown is five days or five weeks, the NRU is ancient in terms of a nuclear plant.

Even optimists must feel shaky with a growing demand draining a supply that can’t be stockpiled, since Mo-99 decays in hours. Advocates for a domestic plant can point out that they’re generally safer than nuclear power plants, but with the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster in Japan unlikely to come to a close until early 2012 at best, few people are opening their arms in welcome over plans to build any new nuclear plants.
An aging fleet
And that’s a problem, because the current crop of reactors is nearing the end of their working lives. The HFR reactor in Petten is currently slated to be decommissioned in 2015, with the NRU reactor to be shuttered the following year. Building a plant in the U.S. requires a lengthy approval process between state and federal government and the Nuclear Regulatory Committee. In fact, the process has proven so daunting that it has been more than three decades since any new plant has been built.

Still, isotope suppliers are exploring their options. For instance, some progress is being made in the effort to create Mo-99 with smaller reactors utilizing a liquid core of low-enriched uranium. Lantheus Medical Imaging Inc., a radiopharmaceutical company, is working with NTP Radioisotopes Ltd., a subsidiary of the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation, to commercially produce the first Mo-99 sourced from LEU.

But even if they succeed, the U.S. is unlikely to see a similar plant within the next few years, which means it’s a game of wait and see to determine not if, but when, lives and livelihoods will again be facing a supply chain stretched to the limit.

EXTRA:

SPECT abides
Supply chain uncertainties might make it seem like a grim situation for SPECT equipment sales, but with thousands of existing systems in the U.S. being used until they fulfill their returns on investment, there’s one final piece of reassurance that still allows SPECT manufacturers to sleep at night— experience. There wouldn’t be thousands of machines performing millions of procedures every year if there weren’t well-trained professionals operating them.

June 2011 Magazine

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