Nuclear: Romanian delegation visits the ENEA experimental reactor TRIGA

ENEA has recently hosted a Romanian delegation headed by Rodin Traicu, President of the Romanian National Commission for Nuclear Activities Control (CNCAN), accompanied by Adrian Goicea, Country manager of Iberdrola, Achille Cester, Italian CEO of Hiruko Int., Paolo Gianlorenzo and Stefan Sas from Hiruko too.

The delegation was particularly interested in visiting ENEA’s TRIGA Reactor, located in the Casaccia Research Centre. The visit focused on research activities carried out at TRIGA reactor and labs on the production of radiopharmaceuticals and follows the signature, last February in Bucarest at RATEN (Romanian Min. for Energy Technologies for Nuclear Energy), of a MoU for the production of Radiopharmaceuticals between Raten and Perma-fix Environmental Inc.

A further Agreement was signed last year by the executive vice president of Perma-Fix Environmental Services, Lou Centofanti, and by the president of ENEA, Federico Testa. It was focused on the production of technetium (99mTc), one of the most essential and most used elements in the world in nuclear medicine, exploiting the potentialities of the TRIGA RC-1 research reactor made available by ENEA and a special process developed by Perma-Fix Medical, a subsidiary of Perma-Fix specialised in radiopharmaceuticals.

The Italy-Romania alliance could be strategic to cope with the imminent shortage of technetium due to the closure of the National Research Universal Reactor Canadian in 2018, the world's first producer of this radioisotope till then. More specifically, the activities will be aimed at producing the ⁹⁹Mo radioisotopes to be used in nuclear medicine. A future agreement will be possibly signed between the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development ant the Romanian partners.