Isotopes & Radiation


Disease-resistant cauliflower created through nuclear science

October 9, 2025, 9:30AMNuclear News
Arvin Boolell (facing), Mauritius’s minister of agro-industry, food security, blue economy, and fisheries, is nearly obscured by the Local Cream cauliflower he is inspecting with scientists.

International Atomic Energy Agency researchers have helped scientists on the Indian Ocean island nation of Mauritius to develop a variety of cauliflower that is resistant to black rot disease. The cauliflower was developed through innovative radiation-induced plant-breeding techniques employed by the Joint Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)/IAEA Centre of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture.

Indonesia begins working on Cs-137 cleanup

October 3, 2025, 12:02PMNuclear News

In August, there was much buzz about the Food and Drug Administration ordering a recall on frozen shrimp imported from Indonesia that was found to be contaminated with cesium-137. While the level of radioactivity in the shrimp was orders of magnitude below a level that would cause any measurable harm to consumers, the concentration of Cs-137 was nonetheless unusual.

Partners work to combat the New World screwworm

September 30, 2025, 9:30AMNuclear News
A New World screwworm fly. (Photo: DOE)

The Office of Radiological Security of the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration has partnered with Texas A&M University to fight the New World screwworm (NWS), a devastating pest that damages—and sometimes kills—livestock, wildlife, pets, and humans.

New World screwworm officially crosses border into . . . Maryland?

August 27, 2025, 9:31AMNuclear News
Secretary of Agriculture Brook Rollins annouces plans to establish a SIT facility at Moore Air Base. (Photo: USDA)

Ranchers in Texas, alongside the U.S. Department of Agriculture, have been bracing for the return of the New World screwworm (NWS), a parasitic fly that lays its eggs in the wounds of warm-blooded animals and, once newly hatched, eats living flesh.

IAEA program uses radioisotopes to protect rhinos

August 11, 2025, 3:00PMNuclear News
The Rhisotope Project team inserts radioactive isotopes into a rhino’s horn. (Source: Martin Klinenboeck/IAEA)

After two years of testing, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, have begun officially implementing the Rhisotope Project, an innovative effort to combat rhino poaching and trafficking by leveraging nuclear technology.

No impact from Savannah River radioactive wasps

August 5, 2025, 3:00PMNuclear News
Photo: Richard Bartz

The news is abuzz with recent stories about four radioactive wasp nests found at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The site has been undergoing cleanup operations since the 1990s related to the production of plutonium and tritium for defense purposes during the Cold War. Cleanup activities are expected to continue into the 2060s.

Radfest at Argonne kicks off ANS Annual Conference

June 30, 2025, 9:30AMANS News
ANS immediate past president Lisa Marshall (blue sweater) tests the radioactivity of various materials at this year’s Radfest with Rex Reidel and Lillian Merrill, two chairs of the ANS Accelerators. (Photo: ANS)

The day before the 2025 ANS Annual Conference officially began in Chicago, the air was abuzz with the crackle of Geiger counters at Argonne National Laboratory in neighboring Lemont, Ill., where about 100 visitors from across the country attended an outreach and education event hosted by the American Nuclear Society.

Oak Ridge’s Isotek dramatically increases world supply of Th-229

May 7, 2025, 12:02PMNuclear News
Isotek employees load canisters of Th-229 that will go to TerraPower to support cancer treatment research. (Photo: DOE)

Workers with Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management contractor Isotek have surpassed a significant milestone in the supply of medical radioisotopes, extracting more than 15 grams of rare thorium-229 through the Department of Energy’s Thorium Express Project.

Framatome opens new fuel workshop for research reactors and medical targets

April 24, 2025, 7:56AMNuclear News
Framatome’s Lionel Gaiffe during the inauguration ceremony of the new CERCA workshop in France. (Photo: Framatome)

Framatome announced that it has inaugurated a new workshop dedicated to the fabrication of fuel for research reactors and targets for medical isotopes at the company’s Romans-sur-Isère site in France. The workshops are part of Framatome’s CERCA division, which manufactures fuel and irradiation targets for research reactors.

Let it RAIN: A new approach to radiation communication

January 31, 2025, 3:18PMNuclear NewsJong H. Kim, Gyuseong Cho, Kun-Woo Cho, Tae Soon Park & Keon W. Kang

Despite its significant benefits, the public perception of radiation is generally negative due to its inherent nature: it is ubiquitous yet cannot be seen, heard, smelled, or touched—as if it were a ghost roaming around uncensored. The public is frightened of this seemingly creepy phantom they cannot detect with their senses. This unfounded fear has hampered the progress of the nuclear industry and radiation professions.

Japanese researchers test detection devices at West Valley

November 20, 2024, 3:15PMNuclear News
Japanese research scientists Sadao Momota (left) and Minoru Tanigaki conducted surveys at the West Valley Demonstration Project to test their radiation detectors. West Valley’s Main Plant Process Building, which is undergoing deconstruction, is shown in the background. (Photo: DOE)

Two research scientists from Japan’s Kyoto University and Kochi University of Technology visited the West Valley Demonstration Project in western New York state earlier this fall to test their novel radiation detectors, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management announced on November 19.

Article explores emerging trends in health physics

October 7, 2024, 12:08PMANS Nuclear Cafe

Key developments, emerging trends, challenges, and innovations in the field of health physics are the topic of a recently published article in Health Physics Journal. The authors of “The Future of Health Physics: Trends, Challenges, and Innovation,” Lekhnath Ghimire and Edward Waller, write that they hope to “foster dialogue and collaboration for the unpredictable yet exciting journey ahead” in health physics.

TerraPower reaches market-scale production of Ac-225

October 4, 2024, 9:30AMNuclear News

TerraPower Isotopes, a subsidiary of Bellevue, Wash.–based TerraPower, announced it is now producing actinium-225 at commercial scale, making the medical isotope available to the pharmaceutical industry through weekly production runs. As a result, TerraPower Isotopes said its actinium, after further manufacturing, is now used in multiple drug developers’ radiopharmaceuticals in human clinical trials across the globe.

Chernobyl-area land deemed safe for new agriculture

September 24, 2024, 10:44AMANS Nuclear Cafe

Kasparov

More than 80 percent of the territory that has been surveyed around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant “can be returned to agricultural production,” said Valery Kashparov, director of the Ukrainian Institute of Agricultural Radiology (UIAR) of the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine.

Kashparov’s team of researchers reported in a recent article in New Scientist the results of its radiation surveys of areas around the site of the 1986 nuclear power plant accident. The group concluded that radiation measurements on much of the land are now below levels regarded as unsafe by Ukrainian regulators.

Decades of research: Kashparov, who has been with the UIAR since 1998, has spent the past 37 years conducting research related to Chernobyl, focusing on the physical-chemical and nuclear-physical properties of radioactive fallout in the area.

The IAEA and two African universities deploy sediment tracking tech in Kenya

August 29, 2024, 7:02AMNuclear News
The 10-member team that collaborated to survey sediments in Kenya’s Kilindini Harbor. (Photo: IAEA)

Kilindini Harbor in Mombasa, Kenya, is East Africas largest international seaport. But rapid development of the Kenyan coastal zone is changing sediment distribution and dispersal patterns in the region, and shifting sediment poses safety and efficiency risks to ships in the harbor. With help from the International Atomic Energy Agency, a team of researchers from Kenya and South Africa has deployed a unique system to measure natural radionuclides in beach and aquatic sediments and map sediment transportation in the region. The IAEA described the mission in a photo essay published August 21.

QSA Global, Niowave to collaborate on Ac-225 production using Ra-226

August 14, 2024, 3:28PMNuclear News

QSA Global, a provider of radioisotope products, and Niowave, a Michigan-based producer of medical radioisotopes, announced that the companies will codevelop a scalable radium purification process using Niowave’s radium-226 processing technology to meet the demand for actinium-225, an alpha-emitter used in the treatment of cancer. According to the companies, the strategic partnership marks a significant advancement in the field of radiopharmaceutical technology, enhancing the supply chain for critical radioisotopes, including Ac-225.

Niowave uses a closed-loop cycle to produce high-purity Ac-225 and other alpha emitters from Ra-226 using a superconducting electron linear accelerator. According to the company’s website, the electron beam impinges on a photon converter to irradiate the Ra-226, inducing a photon-neutron reaction to Ra-225, which decays to Ac-225.

Decay on Demand: DARPA’s bid to disrupt isotope production

July 2, 2024, 7:00AMNuclear News
Source: DARPA

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Defense Sciences Office (DSO) wants to mimic and accelerate the natural half-life decay chain of alpha-emitting radioisotopes and plans to invite proposals for experimental or theoretical research tracks under Decay on Demand—a new DARPA disruptioneering opportunity. The solicitation was published in draft form on June 27.