Ernst Kuipers is the Minister of Health, Welfare and Sports for the Netherlands. He has confirmed that full funding has been allocated for the one billion eight hundred thousand dollars of estimated public investment required for the Pallas research reactor in Petten, the Netherlands.
Kuipers said last September that his ministry was set to spend one hundred and thirty-seven million dollars per year. He also said that the process of getting approval under European Union state aid rules was also under way.
Berthold Leeftink is the CEO of NRG-Pallas. NRG and Pallas are being fused together to form a single organization. He said, “This decision is confirmation that the Pallas reactor is of strategic importance for the Netherlands and Europe. It will strengthen the security of medical isotopes supply for nuclear medicine. For patients, it means faster access to innovative (cancer) treatments.”
Leeftink went on to say that it would help the Netherlands expand its position in the world market for medical isotopes and nuclear research. “It will preserve high-quality knowledge and employment in the North Holland headland”.
Peter Dijk is the Pallas program director. He called the announcement “tremendous news ... with this decision we can proceed with the preparatory works and attract a contractor for realization of the new build”.
The Pallas research reactor is to be constructed at Petten to replace the existing High Flux Reactor (HFR). The forty-five-megawatt HFR started operating in September of 1960. Since then, its use has largely been shifted from nuclear materials testing to fundamental nuclear research and production of medical radioisotopes. The reactor is operated by NRG on behalf of the European Union’s Joint Research Center. It has been providing about sixty percent of Europe’s and thirty percent of the rest of the world’s medical radioactivity sources for decades. Pallas will be a “tank in pool” type reactor with a thermal power of around fifty-five megawatts. It will be able to deploy its neutron flux more efficiently and effectively than the old HFR.
In May of this year, work began on the foundations of the research reactor building after the Authority for Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection granted a construction license for the research reactor last February.
NRG-Pallas claims that the reactor “will guarantee large-scale diagnostic and therapeutic isotopes for millions of patients worldwide over the next 60 years”. It goes on to say that around two hundred thousand patient treatments with therapeutic isotopes take place every years in Europe. This number is expected to rise by about eight percent a year. “Targeted and personalized therapies are very promising because they can be used much more precisely than traditional treatments - this innovative approach has fewer harmful side effects, and is more effective and less stressful for the patient".
The research reactor will be located at the Energy & Health Campus in Petten. Construct will be able to proceed if the Netherland parliament does not object to the creation of a new state-owned company and if the European Commission approves of the public investment.