Assistance program
Molybdenum-99 Program
$103.9 Million committed in FY2020–FY2026
- Agency
- Energy, Department of, Energy, Department of
- Assistance
- Not Applicable
- CFDA number
- 81.009
- What it does
- In 2012, Congress passed the American Medical Isotopes Production Act (AMIPA), which directed the Department of Energy to establish a technology-neutral program to support the establishment of domestic supplies of molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) without the use of highly enriched uranium (HEU). The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE/NNSA) has implemented this by competitively awarding 50%/50% cost-shared cooperative agreements to commercial entities and providing funds to the DOE National Laboratories to support development of non-HEU Mo-99 production technologies. Mo-99 is a critical radioisotope whose decay byproduct technetium-99m (Tc-99m), is used in over 40,000 nuclear medicine diagnostic procedures performed daily in the United States. Its primary uses include diagnosing heart disease and cancer, as well as studying organ structure and function. The isotope’s short half-life and excellent binding properties make it uniquely suited for medical procedures. However, due to its short half-life it must be produced continuously to meet the medical community’s requirements. The United States does not currently have a domestic production capability for Mo-99 sufficient to meet the needs of the U.S. healthcare community, currently estimated at 4,500 6-day curies per week. The establishment of reliable, commercial, non-HEU-based Mo-99 production in the United States complements the long-standing U.S. policy to minimize and eliminate the use of proliferation-sensitive HEU in civilian applications in order to prevent the potential theft of this material for malevolent use. The United States is at the nexus of two related priorities: the need to ensure a reliable, robust Mo-99 supply for U.S. patient care, and discouraging the use of proliferation-sensitive HEU in civilian applications. NNSA will issue Cooperative Agreements with the purpose of providing additional federal funding to accelerate commercial Mo-99 projects’ time to market so that industry and government can fulfill these two critical priorities and decrease the U.S. medical community’s reliance on foreign supplies of Mo-99.
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
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- Committed through this program
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Direct payments