A two-year effort to process and dispose of a low-dose inventory of uranium-233 stored at the U.S. Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee has been completed. As well as eliminating legacy nuclear material, the effort has also provided nuclear isotopes for next-generation cancer treatment research.

After the manmade isotope was created as an alternative nuclear fuel source in the 1950s, the national An Isotek employee processing U-233 inside a glovebox at ORNL Source: ORNLinventory of U-233 was sent to ORNL for long-term storage. About half of the inventory was disposed of by 2017 and the remaining material required processing and downblending to convert it into a form for safe shipment and disposal. However, the heavily shielded hot cells in which to perform the work were not immediately available.

Project contractor Isotek identified a subset of the material with lower radioactivity levels that could be processed in gloveboxes pending the availability of hot cells to address materials with higher radioactivity levels. In a partnership with private nuclear innovation company TerraPower, thorium isotopes were extracted from the U-233 for use in cancer treatment research.

Processing of canisters with the higher-dose U-233 material is scheduled to begin in early 2022.