The purpose of the law is mostly monetary: helping cover the costs of creating the new reactors or technology that can extract moly while meeting U.S. demand.

But although the purpose is monetary, no specific funding is mentioned in the bill. An earlier version of the legislation, which was analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office, allocated about $143 million to help sponsor non-HEU moly projects, but the funding was taken out of the version that passed Congress.


Now, funding for the projects will likely just come out of the recently passed DOE budget, although an exact dollar amount is not included in the bill, according to officials contacted by DOTmed News.

New technologies

In any case, switching to non-HEU moly is a tall order, but SNNMI thinks it's probably doable.

"I think it is realistic, a lot of different entities around the world are making that shift," Dr. Frederic H. Fahey, president of SNMMI, told DOTmed news. "As far as SNMMI is concerned, we think this is a realistic goal."

Moly-99 distributor Lantheus Medical Imaging is currently using a South African reactor to make an LEU-derived isotope, and had its first U.S. commercial shipment in July 2010.

Several companies have also already received federal grants to explore domestic, non-HEU production. One group is NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes LLC. In November, the Wisconsin-based company pocketed $22 million from the National Nuclear Security Administration's Global Threat Reduction Initiative, one of four companies to qualify for the NNSA's cost-sharing, quarter-million dollar grant program. NorthStar hopes to make moly using multiple linear accelerators. Another contender, Babcock & Wilcox Technical Services Group, is looking at using a special LEU-powered "solution reactor."

General Electric-Hitachi had also been working on a neutron capture program to make moly, but suspended the project in February, apparently over concerns about market conditions.

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