Need for Minor Actinides Production

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) manages an inventory of materials that contains a range of long-lived radioactive isotopes that were produced from the 1960s through the 1980s by irradiating targets in production reactors to produce special heavy isotopes for DOE programmatic use, scientific research, and industrial and medical applications. Oak Ridge National Laboratory uses these materials in DOE’s center for production, storage, and distribution of transuranium isotopes (plutonium through californium) for the heavy-element research program and used them as feedstock in the Calutron Electromagnetic Isotope Enrichment Facility, one of only two facilities in the world with capabilities to enrich radioisotopes in multi-gram quantities. Both the production reactors and enrichment facilities have been shut down, and many of these unique materials will never be produced again. As a result, Oak Ridge National Laboratory stores a significant portion of the U.S. inventory of these radioisotopes and the capabilities to process them to meet user needs for minor actinides. This paper summaries the U.S. need for production of minor actinides.