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Isotopes & Radiation

One man’s trash: Extracting valuable isotopes from waste material

The DOE and a contractor recently succeeded in disposing of Oak Ridge’s low-activity U-233, but not before recovering ­Th-229 from the material.

March 17, 2022, 9:31AMRadwaste Solutions
A vial containing Th-299 extracted from uranyl nitrate.

This past October, the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) and its contractor Isotek successfully completed processing and disposing the low-dose inventory of uranium-233 stored at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), ending a two-year effort that has eliminated a portion of the site’s legacy nuclear material and provided rare nuclear isotopes for next-generation cancer treatment research.

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