Irradiation, purification, isotope supply

Irradiation, purification, isotope supply

Already a century ago, Belgium was strongly involved in medical isotope production due to its stocks of uranium ore from former Belgian Congo. This involvement in nuclear physics and radionuclide production eventually led to the creation of the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre (SCK CEN) in 1952. It is one of the two major worldwide producers of Mo-99 through irradiation of Uranium targets in its BR2 research reactor.

The processing of bulk radionuclides and the manufacturing of radiopharmaceuticals is part of the expertise of the National Institute for Radioelements (IRE), founded in 1971 as a spin-off of SCK CEN. With these two large R&D and production centres, Belgium became one of the few countries in the world able to process and supply industrial scale amounts of medical radionuclides such as Mo-99 and I-131.

The Université Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve (UCL) built the first Belgian cyclotron in 1947. With the creation of IBA (Ion Beam Applications) in 1986 as a spin-off of its Cyclotron Research Center, Belgium entered in the field of cyclotrons manufacturing and is now the largest producer of radiopharmacy and proton therapy equipment in the world. IBA thereby opened the way to the widespread local supply of short-lived radionuclides for positron emission tomography (PET), such as F-18.

​Thanks to the expertise in production and refinement of radionuclides, Belgium is one of the few countries in the world able to process and supply industrial scale amounts of medical radionuclides.