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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Chris Wagner: The role of Eden Radioisotopes in the future of nuclear medicine
Chris Wagner has more than 40 years of experience in nuclear medicine, beginning as a clinical practitioner before moving into leadership roles at companies like Mallinckrodt (now Curium) and Nordion. His knowledge of both the clinical and the manufacturing sides of nuclear medicine laid the groundwork for helping to found Eden Radioisotopes, a start-up venture that intends to make diagnostic and therapeutic raw material medical isotopes like molybdenum-99 and lutetium-177.
Patrick R. McClure, David I. Poston, Steven D. Clement, Louis Restrepo, Robert Miller, Manny Negrete
Nuclear Technology | Volume 206 | Number 1 | June 2020 | Pages 43-55
Technical Paper – Kilopower/KRUSTY special issue | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2020.1722544
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The centerpiece of the Kilopower Project, i.e., the Kilowatt Reactor Using Stirling TechnologY (KRUSTY) test, consists of the development and testing of a ground technology demonstration of a small fission power system based on a 1-kW(electric) space science power requirement. The KRUSTY test was authorized by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Field Office. Authorization was obtained by adding an amendment to the existing regulatory documents for the National Criticality Experiments Research Center to cover the KRUSTY experiment. This amendment was reviewed and approved by the DOE. The most important safety question for the experiment was the addition of over 2 $ of excess reactivity to the reactor system. This amount of excess reactivity meant that the analyst could postulate accidents where the reactor went prompt critical, leading to physical shock or melting of the fuel. This paper analyzes these accidents using computer calculations and examines the controls used to mitigate them. The estimation of the impacts both on accident progression and consequences of reactivity insertion events was a significant part of obtaining approval for the KRUSTY experiment. The regulatory approval of KRUSTY was one of the first to be obtained for a completely new reactor concept in many decades.