DOE lab signs pact with Kazakh nuke scientists to aid U.S. medicine

A group of former nuclear scientists in Kazakhstan will soon be using U.S. Energy Department funds to help supply diagnostic medical materials to the United States, a department official said Monday.

Officials from the department's Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Kazakh Institute of Nuclear Physics signed an agreement Sept. 16 at a conference in Almaty, Kazakhstan, to supply radioactive isotopes to the U.S. medical industry, institute director Kayrat Kadyrzhanov told the Almaty Ekspress-K newspaper last week.

U.S. contractor Technology Commercialization International also plans to participate in the project, which involves nearly 150 specialists in producing and processing nuclear materials, said the official from the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration.

"If the project is successful, it will lead to the creation of permanent, long-term peaceful employment for these former weapons of mass destruction personnel," the official said.

According to the recent agreement, Kazakh specialists will produce medical isotopes, Los Alamos technicians will verify their quality and Technology Commercialization International will buy them.

Funded with $1.1 million over three years from the NNSA's Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention program-and with matching funds from Technology Commercialization International-the project aims to enhance potentially scarce supplies of the medical isotope Germanium 68. Health care personnel are increasingly using the isotope to help diagnose certain types of cancer and other diseases in the heart and nervous system with a technique called positron emission tomography, the official said.

The Energy Department is the main supplier of Germanium 68 in the United States, according to the official. The United States has many diagnostic technologies and demand for necessary isotopes is growing quickly. Meanwhile, Kazakhstan easily produces medical isotopes but has few technologies in which to put them to use, according to Ekspress-K.

"The project redounds to the economic benefit of both the U.S. and Kazakhstan and will advance medical care in the U.S.," the NNSA official said.