42 U.S.C. § 2142 — Domestic medical isotope production

(a) The Commission^* may issue a license or amend an existing license to allow highly enriched uranium to be used as a target for producing medical isotopes in a nuclear reactor in the United States only if all of these additional conditions are met:

(1) The Commission determines that—

(A) the reactor has no alternative medical-isotope production target that can be used in it; and

(B) the proposed recipient promises that, whenever such an alternative can be used in the reactor, it will use the alternative instead of highly enriched uranium; and

(2) the Secretary^* of Energy certifies that the United States Government is actively supporting development of an alternative target that can be used in that reactor.

(b) In this section—

(1) “Alternative medical isotope production target” means a nuclear-reactor target enriched to less than 20 percent U–235.

(2) A target “can be used” in a nuclear research or test reactor if—

(A) the Department of Energy’s Reduced Enrichment Research and Test Reactor Program has qualified the target; and

(B) using it would allow the large majority of ongoing and planned experiments and medical-isotope production to take place in the reactor without a large percentage increase in the reactor’s total operating cost.

(3) “Highly enriched uranium” means uranium enriched to 20 percent or more U–235.

(4) “Medical isotope” includes molybdenum-99, iodine-131, xenon-133, and other radioactive materials used to produce a radiopharmaceutical for diagnostic or therapeutic procedures or for research and development. This section does not otherwise define “radiopharmaceutical,” “diagnostic,” “therapeutic,” “research,” or “development.”