ORNL facilities will supercharge US isotope production

The Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory is not only a leading research institution for medical isotopes, it is also the United States' largest producer of these materials for medical and other applications. The lab's ability to produce critical radioactive and stable varieties will be supercharged over the coming years with three major new facilities, made possible through funding by the DOE Office of Isotope R&D and Production (IRP).

Bringing radioisotopes into the 21st century

The approximately 90,000-square-foot Radioisotope Processing Facility, planned to be operational by 2039, will join the Radiochemical Engineering Development Center as the preeminent radioisotope handling facilities in the U.S.

Isotopes are radioactive if they are subject to spontaneous decay accompanied by the emission of alpha, beta or gamma radiation. According to ORNL Isotope and Enrichment Project Director Phillip Ferguson, the new facility will eventually fully meet the demand for more than 20 radioisotopes, none of which is currently produced at sufficient volumes to meet demand.

"For each of the radioisotopes we're producing right now," Ferguson said, "we do not fully meet all the supply demands. If we could make more, industry and federal agencies have the need. So, we make what we are able for the IRP, who provides the guidance ensuring that we fill high-priority needs to the best we can."

ORNL's current radioisotope facilities date to the mid-1960s and earlier. Ferguson said the new facility will help bring the lab's radioisotope production into the 21st century, and IRP is targeting for the facility to be open for public private partnership opportunities.

Radioisotopes are processed in shielded chambers known as hot cells. ORNL's current hot cells use concrete and lead shielding to protect technicians and others from radiation. The new hot cells, Ferguson said, will use steel for shielding, allowing the facility to have a modular design that enables the hot cells to be reconfigured to adapt to changing needs.

"If you pour concrete hot cells, which is the traditional method, then what you have on Day One is all you're ever going to have," he said. "You can't have more. You can't have less."

The Radioisotope Processing Facility will also be built near the lab's High Flux Isotope Reactor, a DOE Office of Science user facility that is crucial to the production of radioisotopes.

Rebooting American stable isotope production

Stable isotopes - ones that aren't subject to radioactive decay - are often also very valuable. In the United States, stable isotopes were produced during World War II and in the following decades at what is now the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge. That production ended in 1998, however, and in the meantime the need for stable isotopes was met either from inventory left over from Y-12's isotope production or by foreign suppliers.

That drought will end with two new stable isotope production facilities, both located at ORNL. The first, called the Stable Isotope Production Facility, was completed in 2025 and currently produces xenon-129, an isotope that can be inhaled and used in magnetic resonance imaging of lungs.

The second, larger facility will be known as the Stable Isotope Production and Research Center, or SIPRC.

According to Ferguson, it will be built in two halves. The first will house a gas centrifuge, which is effective for producing isotopes in bulk. The second will house a more flexible electromagnetic isotope separator, which can enrich a wider range of isotopes but in smaller quantities.

He also noted that the SIPRC will serve a research function, reestablishing U.S. production knowledge in areas such as the properties of gases used in enrichment.

"We have to have the ability to learn what those gas properties are," he said, "and part of SIPRC will be building those single-machine testing capabilities to reestablish that knowledge or to expand that knowledge."

Isotope production is perfect for a national lab

Ferguson stressed that the new isotope production being located at ORNL will have many benefits: boosting the American economy by providing needed isotopes and further enabling strategic partnerships with industry, ending U.S. reliance on foreign countries for critical isotopes, and bringing new hope to people suffering from cancer and other diseases.

In his view, these are ideal jobs for a national laboratory.

"These are the missions that a national lab should do," he said. "We should tackle the problem that others can't do or shouldn't pursue. I look at it and say, 'These are things other entities can't do, and we should do this for society.'

UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE's Office of Science. The single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, the Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.