Recover legacy radium-226 sources worldwide as the feedstock for actinium-225
Thousands of old radium sources sit in hospital and industrial storage. They are exactly the raw material needed to make actinium-225, the scarcest cancer isotope.
Actinium-225 supply from thorium-229 generators (the legacy US and Russian stockpiles) is limited to tens of curies a year, far short of projected demand for alpha radioligand therapy. Accelerator routes (radium-226 irradiated in cyclotrons, linacs or via spallation at TRIUMF) scale with radium feedstock. Radium-226 exists in large quantities in disused brachytherapy sources, industrial gauges and uranium mill tailings, currently classed as waste and expensive to store. The proposal is a coordinated recovery, purification and target-fabrication programme run with the IAEA and national nuclear agencies, offering source holders free disposal in exchange for the material.
- Manufacturing cost and time for living and radioactive medicines · Cell therapies take weeks to make for one patient and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Isotopes run short.