Technical Meeting on Commercial Products and Services of
Research Reactors

28 June–2 July, 2010, IAEA, Vienna

The high flux research reactor MARIA is operated at the Institute of Atomic Energy (IAE) POLATOM. Due to the shutdown of the NRU reactor (Canada) and plans for scramming the HFR reactor (Holland) in the half of 2009 a decision was taken on cooperation between IAE and COVIDIEN which was aimed to initiate an irradiation of high-enriched uranium plates in MARIA reactor for production of molybdenum Mo-99. There was developed the Mo-99 irradiation and transport technology in MARIA reactor facility and then its expedition to the reprocessing factory in Petten (Netherlands). The physics calculation, safety analyses, technical projects of equipment for irradiation and transport inside the reactor facility and loading to the special transport container (MARIANNE) were made. The positive opinion of the Nuclear Safety Committee of IAE and approvals released by the National Atomic Energy Agency were received in the end of December 2009. Before regular irradiation the program for checking and testing full installation was carried out. The number of licenses needed for the transport of irradiated uranium plates from MARIA reactor in Poland through Germany to Holland were received. The final stage of examination was the test irradiation of uranium plates in the period 8–14 February 2010 in nominal conditions. These plates successively were delivered to Petten. The achieved very good results of production were confirmed by the performed calculations and physical analyses so at the beginning of March started regular irradiations at first in singular and later in two channels.

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