Recently, the world's highest-power solution-type medical isotope reactor, the medical isotope test reactor of China Nuclear Power Research and Design Institute of China National Nuclear Corporation, officially started construction in Jiajiang County, Leshan City, Sichuan Province. It is reported that this is the first dedicated production reactor for medical isotopes in China, which is expected to be completed and put into operation in 2027.
Medical isotopes are the basis of nuclear medicine diagnosis and treatment, and are widely used in the diagnosis of various major diseases**.
For a long time, some European and American countries have firmly grasped the right to speak on medical isotopes, and most of China's medical isotopes rely on imports. Wang Conglin, Secretary of the Party Committee of the Nuclear Power Institute, said that limited by the development of the medical isotope industry, there is a significant gap between the application level of nuclear medicine in China and that of developed countries.
In terms of the frequency of nuclear medicine diagnosis and treatment, the number of nuclear medicine instruments per capita and the amount of radioactive drugs used, developed countries such as Europe, the United States and Japan are dozens of times that of China. In developed countries, about one-fifth of patients need medical isotopes, but the current situation in this field in China is worrying.
The construction of medical isotope piles is an imperative and we have to do it. Xu Yu, vice president of the Nuclear Power Institute, said.
As the world's highest-powered solution-type medical isotope production reactor, the medical isotope reactor under construction this time can achieve an annual production capacity of 100,000 curies and 20,000 curies respectively for molybdenum-99 and iodine-131, driving the development of downstream industries. It will bring major changes to China's cancer diagnosis, and solve the problem of long-term dependence on imports and restrictions on two isotopes, so as to meet the needs of tens of millions of domestic nuclear medicine diagnoses and people.
At present, China's medical isotope research and development mainly relies on engineering research reactors, but because they also shoulder other tasks, the ability to produce medical isotopes is very limited. On the demand side, the market demand for medical isotopes and their compounds is growing at a rate of 25% to 30% per year. The extremely limited scale of production of reactors is simply not enough to meet the growing market demand.
Not only in the domestic market, but also in the international market is also facing the most difficult problems. In recent years, medical isotopes have relied on a few medical research reactors in Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, South Africa, Australia and other countries and regions, most of which have been out of service and face a series of problems such as high maintenance costs, difficult waste solutions, and safety risks. It can be seen that the construction of a new medical isotope production reactor will not only alleviate the tight domestic supply and demand, but also create favorable conditions for "grabbing" the international market.
Li Qing, chief designer of the medical isotope reactor project, said that the medical isotope reactor uses uranyl nitrate aqueous solution as fuel, and at the same time, uranyl nitrate aqueous solution is also a target material for the production of isotopes, and its inherent characteristics determine that it has innate advantages far beyond conventional reactors in the field of nuclear safety and environmental protection. "The medical isotope stack has low parameters and low power, so it is safer. ”
In addition, the cost of building a medical isotope reactor is one-third that of a common reactor, and the fuel consumption is four-thousandth that of existing technology. (Economic ** reporter Qi Hui).