Harvesting a rare isotope from radioactive material<\/p>\n
Actinium-225 is not yet approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for commercial cancer treatment, but is being tested in clinical trials to treat cancers including breast, prostate and myeloid leukemia<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n TerraPower Isotopes will harvest actinium-225 from an amount of radioactive thorium equivalent to the mass of about 20 paper clips during its decay process, Claunch said. The thorium is extracted from the federal government\u2019s inventory of uranium<\/a> left over from the Cold War, and shipped on roadways from the U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee to TerraPower Isotopes\u2019 facilities.\n<\/p>\n Demand is growing globally<\/a> for actinium-225 but supply is limited, according to the U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s National Isotope Development Center. Claunch said currently, the amount of actinium-225 produced worldwide is equivalent to just a few grains of sand.\n<\/p>\n \u201cWhen [the site] comes online in 2029, we will increase global production capacity by 20 times,\u201d Claunch said. \u201cA few more grains of sand.\u201d\n <\/p>\n TerraPower Isotopes plans to ship its actinium-225 to drug developers that will attach the isotope to targeting molecules that Claunch said can act like GPS systems inside patients\u2019 bodies.\n<\/p>\n \u201cThat then gets injected into a patient who has disease, and that final product makes its way just to the cancer cell and destroys just the cancer cell, saving nearby healthy tissue,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n Claunch said the company will install hot cells, chambers that contain the radioactive materials and allow workers to safely handle the substance<\/a> through mechanized arms. He said the manufacturing of the isotopes will not pose a health risk to employees or nearby residents. The company will also need to comply with Pennsylvania\u2019s radiation protection regulations<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n \u201cWe have safeguards in place, we have containment systems in place to make sure that our people, our personnel at the site, as well as the general public are very well protected,\u201d Claunch said.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Harvesting a rare isotope from radioactive material Actinium-225 is not yet approved by the U.S. Food and Drug…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1130,69,71,70,2312,645],"class_list":["post-185834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-nuclear","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-planphilly","tag-south-philadelphia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}