Update on HFR Reactor Outage – Medical Isotope Supply Returning to Normal

The MARIA research reactor (Poland) has added additional operating days, which has helped to reduce the loss of HFR production capacity.

The MARIA research reactor in Poland has added additional operating days, which has helped to reduce the loss of HFR production capacity.

February 18, 2022 — The Nuclear Medicine Europe (NMEu) Emergency Response Team held a call on February 14 on the unplanned HFR outage that resulted in cancellation of the planned HFR first operating cycle of 2022. NMEu was told that the HFR reactor operator, NRG, has a plan to restart the reactor that is being reviewed by their Reactor Safety Committee before submission to the Dutch nuclear safety authority, ANVS, later this week. NRG is aiming to restart the HFR reactor on March 17 for its second cycle of 2022, noting that the licensing and execution of restoring the cooling function must still be performed.

Fortunately, the MARIA research reactor (Poland) has added additional operating days, which has helped to reduce the loss of HFR production capacity. The BR2 reactor also resumed operations February 12—three days earlier than originally planned. Curium has harvested Mo-99 targets from short irradiations at BR2 and is now processing Mo-99 for customers. IRE will resume production on its high-enriched uranium production line later this week. Read the full notice here.

For more information: www.snmmi.org

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