US engineers work to develop compact isotope generator

Now, thanks to $500,000 (£315,000) in funding from the US Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, a programme of research led by leaders of the Morgridge Institute for Research, engineers at Phoenix Nuclear Labs, Wisconsin-Madison University and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has been chartered with the goal of developing a new type of isotope generator that is compact and relatively inexpensive and that does not require a nuclear reactor.

Once developed, the generator could be used to produce molybdenum-99, an isotope that produces technetium-99m, the most important radioisotope for detecting metastatic cancer and staging heart disease, studying brain and kidney function and creating images of stress fractures.

Instead of using a nuclear reactor to make the isotopes, the new generator uses nuclear fusion reactions (at a much lower efficiency than is required to produce electrical power) to create neutrons and protons, which, in turn, create radioisotopes such as molybdenum-99, iodine-131 and iodine-125.