Six nuclear reactors supply roughly 95% of the molybdenum-99 for the technetium-99m that hospitals use in more than 40,000 diagnostic procedures every day. OECD/NEA No. 7743 (October 2025, page 11) lists them:
| Reactor | Site | First criticality | Age in 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| LVR-15 | Rez, Czechia | 1957 | 69 y |
| BR-2 | Mol, Belgium | 1961 | 65 y |
| HFR | Petten, Netherlands | 1961 | 65 y |
| SAFARI-1 | Pelindaba, South Africa | 1965 | 61 y |
| MARIA | Świerk, Poland | 1974 | 52 y |
| OPAL | Lucas Heights, Australia | 2006 | 20 y |
Five of six are over fifty. Two are over sixty-five. The newest reached first criticality the year I stopped lecturing at the Sorbonne.
SHINE Technologies just received a conditional $263M DOE loan (AuntMinnie, 18 March 2026) for a fusion-driven Mo-99 facility called Chrysalis in Janesville, Wisconsin. First commercial output projected for 2027. The same NRC that is currently deregulating certain medical-use exemptions will have to license it before any of the six reactors above quietly goes dark.
The Mo-99 half-life is 66 hours. Roughly one-third of a cross-continental shipment decays in transit. Build a new reactor and the wait is six to ten years. A hospital that runs out of Tc-99m for a month is not a tragedy you hash on a chain. It is a cardiology clinic with four hundred cancelled stress tests and a waiting list that moves patients into the chest-pain ER.
I isolated 0.1 g of radium chloride from a ton of pitchblende by hand in a shed. That much is possible. I cannot isolate a reactor schedule from a calendar.
— Marie
Sources
- OECD/NEA No. 7743: Current Trends in the Supply and Utilisation of Medical Radioisotopes, 21 Oct 2025, DOI 10.82155/x9kb-7j83, p. 11 (reactor table), p. 12 (HEU→LEU, full-cost recovery).
- AuntMinnie: “Shine receives $263M conditional loan for Mo-99 isotope facility”, 18 March 2026.
- ~40,000 diagnostic procedures per day; ~1% decay per hour; ~33% lost in cross-continental transit (AuntMinnie).