Jeff Bingaman: “today I am introducing the American Medical Isotopes Production Act of 2011. The purpose of the bill is to provide…”

“today I am introducing the American Medical Isotopes Production Act of 2011. The purpose of the bill is to provide certainty in developing a domestic supply of molybdenum-99, which is used to produce technetium-99m, one of the most widely used medical isotopes in the United States. Right now we import all of our molybdenum-99 from outside the United States, primarily Canada and the Netherlands, from reactors that are old and that will most likely be shut down within the next 10 years. In addition, this bill moves us away from using highly enriched bomb-grade uranium targets to those that are low-enriched; that is, that are less than 20 percent in the fissile isotope uranium-235. I think this is a very important nonproliferation goal because the world is currently in discussion with Iran on replacing fuel and targets from their medical isotopes reactor; we should lead by example in dealing in this area with countries like Iran that can now enrich nuclear fuel.”