POWER May 2020 - 9

GLOBAL MONITOR
duction capabilities appears poised to
ramp up, owing to tight supplies of the
short-lived element forms. As the Nuclear
Energy Agency suggested in a November
2019 report outlining medical isotope
demand and capacity through 2024, for
example, concerns about supply reliability
of two extremely short-lived key isotopes,
molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) and technetium99m,
which are used in nearly 80% of all
nuclear medicine procedures, have been
magnified over the past decade, owing
to unexpected shutdowns of aging research
reactors and processing facilities.
Last October, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission accepted an operating
license application submitted by Shine
Medical Technologies to operate a lowenergy,
accelerator-based neutron source
(instead of a nuclear reactor) in Janesville,
Wisconsin, to produce two-thirds of the
nation's patient demand for Mo-99, as well
as other isotopes, including Lu-177. In November,
Isotek Systems, TerraPower, and
Oak Ridge National Laboratory agreed to
extract thorium-229 from the Department
of Energy's legacy uranium-233 inventory
and use it to produce actinium-225,
an extremely rare isotope that has a vast
potential to serve as the basis for groundbreaking
cancer treatments.
Meanwhile, in February, Westinghouse
Electric signed a letter of intent with Nordion
to develop an " innovative isotope production
technology " that will allow Co-60
to be produced in pressurized water reactors.
Nordion, notably, in February 2019 acquired
technology patents related to Co-60
production in light water reactors from GEHitachi
Nuclear Energy Americas, which
means it also has the intellectual property
to enable Co-60 to be made in boiling water
reactors. The company has promoted
that capability, noting that the technology's
viability has already been demonstrated in
a pilot program that successfully produced
approximately one million curies of Co-60
at two U.S. reactors.
More recent non-CANDU examples of
reactors adopting Co-60 production are
centered in Russia. While Rosatom's Leningrad
reactor, an RBMK graphite-moderated
design, has been producing Co-60
for more than 20 years, Rosatom recently
began production at several other RBMK
reactors, including at Kursk-4 in November
2018 and all three Smolensk units in
November 2019.
-Sonal Patel is a POWER senior
associate editor.
Innovative Distributed Generation
Projects Provide Power to Remote
Areas
Remote communities have become
testing grounds for innovative power
projects. These areas traditionally have
been powered by fossil fuel generation,
usually diesel fuel or oil and sometimes
natural gas, and impacted by volatile
prices and transportation issues for the
fuels. Efforts to eliminate those impacts,
including carbon emissions, and developing
electricity solutions powered by
renewable energy have been a priority
for companies working on technologies
for microgrids and distributed energy resource
management systems (DERMS).
PXiSE Energy Solutions (pronounced
" pice " ), a subsidiary of San Diego, California-based
Sempra Energy, has been
deploying its power plant and grid control
systems, along with microgrids and comprehensive
DERMS designs, in projects
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May 2020 | POWER
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POWER May 2020

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