Moscow, April 27, 2020 - Rosenergoatom, (part of Rosatom’s Electric Energy Division), together with Rusatom Healthcare JSC and Isotope JSC, has proceeded to the practical stage of its isotope business development programme.
The main goal of the programme is to increase the company’s isotope production volumes, as well as to widen the variety of isotopes produced to include more of the world’s most widely used and most demanded isotopes.
In the near future, the company, therefore, plans to increase its contribution to the global Cobalt-60 (60Co) market from 15% to 30%. Cobalt-60 is an isotope used to fight the spread of infections, for instance, through the sterilisation of medical devices and the disinfection of food and drinking water.
After the irradiation of loaded cobalt absorbers, the Kursk NPP will alone satisfy about one fifth of the annual global Cobalt-60 demand, while the amount of Cobalt-60 extracted from the Smolensk NPP Unit 3 alone will be enough to sterilise 400,000 tonnes of specialised medical devices or 700,000 tonnes of spices, 2 million tonnes of meat, more than 1 million tonnes of grain, or 50 million tonnes of vegetables.
Rosenergoatom also plans to start producing popular medical isotopes, such as molybdenum-99, iodine-131, iodine-125, samarium-153, lutetium-177, and others used for the treatment and diagnosis of cancer.
The programme’s baseline scenario envisages an increase in annual revenue and a significant widening of Rosenergoatom isotope portfolio by 2030.