A nuclear physicist has urged the United States to produce its own medical isotopes instead of relying on non-U.S. production reactors fueled by weapon-grade uranium, the Canwest News Service reported Wednesday (see GSN, Nov. 17, 2008).
The United States relies largely on Canada's 51-year-old National Research Universal reactor at Chalk River to supply technetium 99m, an agent commonly used in cardiac diagnostic tests and other medical procedures (see GSN, Oct. 7, 2008). Experts have expressed concern that terrorists could seize uranium from such a site to use in a nuclear bomb, according to Canwest.
Edwin Lyman, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, urged the United States to produce the isotope using a new process that would use low-enriched uranium, which could not fuel a nuclear weapon.
"The development of a domestic LEU-based production capability ... must become a [U.S.] priority," Lyman wrote in a Dec. 18 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists commentary.
In the Nonproliferation Review, Cristina Hansell of the James L. Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies wrote that "if nuclear terrorism is to be prevented, then [HEU-based isotope] production should be recognized as an increasingly weak link. ... Though it is not extremely likely that a terrorist will steal material in Chalk River, Canada, and create a nuclear device that is detonated in a North American city, it is not impossible."
The Canadian facility's operator has said that financial and technical obstacles have prevented it from switching to a low-enriched uranium process. The site is believed to hold up to 45 kilograms of U.S.-origin highly enriched uranium, according to Canwest. A terrorist group such as al-Qaeda would need about 40 kilograms of weapon-grade material to produce a gun-type nuclear bomb, experts have said.
Up to 100 metric tons of highly enriched uranium is believed to be held around the world in civilian facilities that could prove more vulnerable than their military counterparts, according to Center for Nonproliferation Studies head William Potter (Ian MacLeod, Canwest News Service/Montreal Gazette, Jan. 7).