Trace Life Sciences (TLS) owned and operated two plants in Denton, Texas where medical radioisotopes were manufactured for diagnosing disease and treating cancer. When the financial backers of the company went into receivership, TLS closed the Denton plants in 2009.
A linear accelerator was purchased by TLS to use in the manufacture of medical radioisotopes. The accelerator was originally built for the failed Superconductor Super Collider project by the Los Alamos National Laboratory. It currently resides in an underground concrete tunnel. To date, inspectors who visit the Denton facilities regularly have found no signs of outside radiation. It will be most expensive part of the facilities to clean up.
NuView Life Sciences (NLS) pulled the Denton plants out of receivership and created US Radiopharmaceuticals (USR), a wholly owned subsidiary of NuView, in an attempt to reopen the Denton facilities and begin manufacturing medical radioisotopes again.
USR formally applied to the Texas Department of State Health Services (TDSHS) for a new manufacturing license for the Denton facilities in 2012. Investors were sought to support reopening the facility. The new license application that was filed by USR included a requirement that USR have sufficient funds to clean up the radioactive waste when the plants was closed permanently. Special insurance is also available to satisfy the licensing requirements for covering the cost of cleanup. To date, USR has not been able to obtain sufficient investment to reopen the Denton facility.
While USR has been searching for investors, the state of Texas has allowed USR to store low-level radioactive waste in drums at the Denton plants. The equipment used to make the radioisotopes is also radioactive but has been deemed to pose no threat to the surround area for the time being.
There was a special hearing held in February where a state administrative judge, USR and state health officials estimated that it would cost from two million to two and a half million dollars to clear up the radioactive waste that is stored at the Denton facilities.
On July 16th, the TDSHS instructed USR to decommission its two plants in Denton and clean up the radioactive waste stored at the two plants by August of 2019. If they fail to meet that deadline, the job will have to be done by the state health official with the cost being born by the taxpayers.
Texas does have a special fund for the clean up of low-level radioactive waste. Last year, the fund contained about twenty-seven million dollars. A new audit of the fund will be completed by the Texas comptroller’s office this August. The TDSHS is authorized by Texas state law to attempt to recover the cost of the cleanup from USR, if they fail to meet the deadline for cleaning up the site.
Medical radioisotopes are critical for some diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Recently there have been global shortages of important medical radioisotopes and countries and companies have been scrambling to find new ways to manufacture medical isotopes and open new facilities to meet the global demand for medical radioisotopes. Unfortunately, the Denton facilities will not be participating in this radiopharmaceuticals renaissance.