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Conference Spotlight
2026 Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
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The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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Latest News
Modernizing I&C for operations and maintenance, one phase at a time
The two reactors at Dominion Energy’s Surry plant are among the oldest in the U.S. nuclear fleet. Yet when the plant celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2023, staff could raise a toast to the future. Surry was one of the first plants to file a subsequent license renewal (SLR) application, and in May 2021, it became official: the plant was licensed to operate for a full 80 years, extending its reactors’ lifespans into 2052 and 2053.
Andrew J. Hummel, Todd S. Palmer
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 183 | Number 1 | May 2016 | Pages 149-159
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE15-37
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The most widely used and versatile medical radioisotope today is 99mTc. Roughly 30 million people depend on this radioisotope for diagnostic imaging procedures each year, and this demand is expected to grow. Although there are numerous ways of producing this isotope, the most common is from fission product 99Mo, which is produced in all nuclear reactors fueled with 235U as a fission fragment with a yield of around 6.1%. Molybdenum-99 has a half-life of just over 2.5 days, and it will decay to 99mTc 87% of the time. The Reduced Enrichment for Research Test Reactors program was established at Argonne National Laboratory in 1978 to investigate technology that would aid in converting highly enriched uranium (HEU) facilities to low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuel. Since the majority of all 99Mo produced currently comes from the irradiation of HEU fuel targets, there has been a growing effort to design LEU targets that can yield comparable quantities of high specific activity 99Mo. Recently, a novel LEU target design has been developed for use in TRIGA reactors for the production of 99Mo. The simulation tool MCNP5 was used to examine the neutronic behavior of multiple core configurations fueled solely with this new target.
