British Closed Nuclear Centres Partnership

"Radioisotope Markets" - the comments of foreign specialists

Isotopes Seminar in Almaty, May 2008

Isotope production in former Soviet Union Republics

The production of radioisotopes uses the key skills and resources of the institutes in the former Soviet Union Republics involved in the CNCP Programme and, therefore, provides good opportunities for generating sustainable jobs. However, this is a difficult market to enter and there are a number of challenges to be overcome.

Medical Applications

The prospects in the medical sector are very exciting. For diagnostics, the use of isotopes particularly Technetium-99m for PET and PET/CT scanning is helping doctors to make early diagnoses of cancers and effectively target treatments.

Iodine-131 is the most common isotope used for therapy.

The trend for therapeutic applications is for the use of short-lived alpha (and beta) active isotopes for specific treatments. The US is leading the way here with a number of radiopharmaceuticals going through trials (including for example Actinium-227).

While the market opportunities look attractive there are significant challenges which include:

quality control, both from the point of view of contamination and sterility;
reliability of delivery which is critical for patient care;
logistics of getting short lived isotopes delivered to the customers.

These require careful scheduling, management and communication, throughout the production and distribution process, to consistently understand and meet customer requirements.

CNCP is funding preliminary projects in Almaty, Kiev and Yerevan to assess the viability of producing Technetium-99m generators (using the longer lived Molybdenum-99 as a precursor), as well as assessing the viability of manufacturing other short-lived isotopes for therapeutic applications. We are also funding a project to set up production of Actinium-227 in Kurchatov.

CNCP supported a project to provide technical advice to the Institute of Nuclear Physics at Alatau to help them with their government-funded project to build a nuclear medicine centre. This has involved advice from senior medical and medical physics staff from Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital, as well as a number of exchange visits.

Industrial Applications

One of the key challenges in marketing industrial isotopes are restrictions on importing and exporting radioactive materials (either due to the limited number of airline operators prepared to carry radioactive products or due to national import and export restrictions). This poses opportunities in developing domestic markets (where foreign competitors are restricted), but may restrict developing overseas markets.

We heard at the seminar in Alatau, how a UK company (Tracerco) is interested in developing its business with the oil and gas sectors in certain former Soviet Union Republics using radioactive products, which could be manufactured at the institutes, thereby reducing logistical problems.

Success in international markets requires the identification of niche products and an international distributor. For example, INP Alatau have good relationships with a German company which is distributing some of their product lines and has expressed interest in others.

CNCP is funding a number of projects to establish the production of isotopes and sealed sources, particularly INP Tashkent (Cobalt-57) and INP Alatau (Iridium-92, Antimony-124, Cadmium-109 and Cobalt-60). We are also supporting a project, INP Tashkent, which is using radioactive sources (Caesium-137) as part of a level gauge, which they are supplying to oil refineries.

Summary

The isotopes market is highly regulated and is a difficult market to operate in. However, it uses the key skills and resources of the institutes and isotope production has the potential to produce high quality sustainable jobs. CNCP has therefore supported the development of these activities through grant-funded projects, technical assistance and a focused seminar.

Finally we recognise that the production of isotopes does not fully occupy the facilities (reactors, accelerators, analytical laboratories and other support facilities) and to keep these operating (and, therefore, maintain the jobs created by isotope production) a plan for optimising the workload of these facilities (including other income streams) is required.

The CNCP Programme, therefore, looks forward to the continued development of isotope projects as well as other initiatives supporting the key resources in the former Soviet Union Republics institutes.

Jonathan Perks
CNCP Expert

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