Isotopes & Radiation

Fusion technology company Shine has been issued a conditional commitment for a loan of up to $263 million by the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Dominance Financing (EDF) to support the construction of the company’s medical isotope production facility in Janesville, Wis.

The University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR) has commenced production of gadolinium-153, a radioisotope used in medical imaging applications, as announced by the Department of Energy’s Office of Isotope R&D Production (IRP) and the university earlier this week. That makes MURR the only domestic supplier of Gd-153 and one of two suppliers in the world.

The University of Missouri has entered a consulting agreement with construction firm Burns & McDonnell to develop NextGen MURR, a new 20-MW light water research reactor that will produce medical isotopes for cancer treatments and theranostics and will be used to conduct neutron science research.

TerraPower Isotopes, a TerraPower subsidiary, plans to increase its actinium-225 production 20-fold by opening a new manufacturing facility in Philadelphia, Pa., and by expanding the capacity of its Everett, Wash., facility. On March 17, TerraPower Isotopes said it expects the new facility to begin producing the medical radioisotope for targeted alpha therapy in 2029.

Last year, the state of Texas, in partnership with several arms of the federal government, mounted a major response to the New World screwworm (NWS)—a parasitic fly spreading through Mexico.

This year, as the NWS has continued its northward advance toward the U.S. border, eradication efforts have continued and intensified on multiple fronts.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The American Nuclear Society (ANS), a nonprofit representing over 12,000 professionals in the fields of nuclear science and technology, issues the following response to "National Analysis of Cancer Mortality and Proximity to Nuclear Power Plants in the United States," by Yazan Alwadi, Petros Koutrakis, et al., published February 23, 2026, in Nature Communications (doi: 10.1038/s41467-026-69285-4):

Experts with ANS, including health physicists and radiation protection specialists, have reviewed the study published in Nature Communications purporting to show associations between residential proximity to nuclear power plants and elevated cancer mortality rates across U.S. counties from 2000 to 2018. This study contains fundamental methodological shortcomings, acknowledged by the authors themselves, that prevent it from supporting any credible scientific conclusions.

The Bottom Line:

This flawed ecological study does not advance our understanding of radiological risk. The authors themselves state that their findings "cannot establish causality" and that their study "does not include dosimetry," admissions that undermine the study's central premise and that ANS urges journalists and policymakers to weigh carefully.

ANSTO’s Gordon Thorogood (left) and Robert Raposio examine the cylindrical, porous, reusable Mo-99 targets. (Photo: ANSTO)

The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization (ANSTO) announced that it has made progress on a more cost-effective way to produce the medical radioisotope molybdenum-99, with less enrichment of uranium-235 and less waste produced.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has reported that, to date, 14 countries have made 14 transfers of disused radium to be recycled for use in advanced cancer treatments under the agency’s Global Radium-226 Management Initiative. Through this initiative, which was launched in 2021, legacy radium-226 from decades-old medical and industrial sources is used to produce actinium-225 radiopharmaceuticals, which have shown effectiveness in the treatment of patients with breast and prostate cancers and certain other cancers.

The Department of Energy has announced the successful transfer of the first Mark-18A target from the Savannah River Site to Savannah River National Laboratory, marking “the beginning of operations for a newly established radiochemical separation capability to recover valuable isotopes.” The agency stated that the Mark-18A Target Recovery Program—which involves the DOE National Nuclear Security Administration, the Office of Environmental Management, and the Office of Science—is demonstrating “how legacy materials previously destined for disposal can be recovered and transformed into valuable resources.”

The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration reported that it has removed all cesium-137 irradiators from the state of Oklahoma.

Australia-based Clarity Pharmaceuticals, a clinical-stage radiopharmaceutical company, has signed a supply agreement for copper-67 with Nusano, Inc., headquartered in California. Nusano produces radioisotopes for medical, commercial, and industrial applications.

Members of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency’s Second Framework for Irradiation Experiments (FIDES-II) joint undertaking gathered from September 29 to October 3 in Ketchum, Idaho, for the technical advisory group and governing board meetings hosted by Idaho National Laboratory. The FIDES-II Framework aims to ensure and foster competences in experimental nuclear fuel and structural materials in-reactor experiments through a diverse set of Joint Experimental Programs (JEEPs).

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.

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.

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.

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.

Media outlets have been abuzz this week with news of cesium-137 contamination in Great Value (Walmart’s private-label brand) frozen shrimp, according to a Food and Drug Administration report.

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.

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.

One of the more pivotal issues in facilitating the use of radiation sources—including nuclear power—in the United States (and most of the Western world) is concern about the health effects of low levels of radiation. The current regulatory assumption is that every additional increment of radiation linearly increases the risk of cancer.