OAK RIDGE, Tenn. — For decades Oak Ridge National Laboratory has been housing uranium 233. It was once a hopeful prospect as fuel for nuclear energy, but other resources were deemed to be better.
The material has been sitting at ORNL ever since. IsoTek Systems, a Winchester-based company, is safely removing the materials and in the process is extracting another element. That isotope is called Thorium-229 and Isotek Systems is shipping that element to a company out of Washington called TerraPower, which then refines it to make Actinium-225 which goes into targeted alpha therapy drugs.
The drugs are often used to treat types of cancer.
"If successful, it paves the way for use in cancer patients around the world", said Sarah Schaefer, President of IsoTek Systems.
So far the company has shipped 11 grams of Thorium out to TerraPower, and plans to get 40 grams to them by 2029.
"All along we've said what we do here may save somebody's life. Well, while the material was being stored it was kind of easy to say that. Now, it's actually made its way into clinical trials," said Schaefer.
Around 10,000 doses of treatment medication can be made per gram of Thorium, and that supply will continue to grow.
"The Thorium-229, which is the source of the Actinium — its half-life is 150,000 years. So it will continue to produce Actinium-225 for cancer patients for well beyond your and my lifetime," Schaefer said.
The drug is still in clinical trial but it is using materials sourced from ORNL.
"We just heard a couple of weeks ago that some of the material we've extracted has actually made it to the clinical trial. So it's actually being used for cancer treatment in the industry," said Karl Thomas, Senior Technical Adviser to Operations for IsoTek Systems.