Today, PALLAS submitted the building permit application for the Nuclear Health Centre (NHC), a production facility that will play an important part in the production and development of nuclear medicines, to the Schagen municipality. The NHC is expected to open its doors in 2022. This production facility is going to process irradiated raw materials from a reactor into medicines by order of hospitals and the pharmaceutical segment. This large-scaled production will be used to treat millions of patients in hospitals.
Every day, 30.000 patients are depending on the production of medical radioisotopes in a small town in Noord-Holland, called Petten. This number is only expected to increase due to new treatments with medical isotopes from reactors and the increased number of patients suffering from cancerous and cardiac diseases all over the world. In addition to the irradiation of medical isotopes, there is also an urgent need of production facilities processing irradiated raw materials into semi-finished products (radio chemicals) or into medicines (radiopharmaceuticals). Therefore, PALLAS has initiated the construction of both the PALLAS-reactor and the NHC in Petten. Submitting the building permit application is an important milestone in the realization of the production facility. The NHC’s design was focused on a flexible infrastructure, thus offering its clients customized solutions for processing various isotope groups, like alpha, beta and gamma, into radio chemicals and/or radiopharmaceuticals.
The NHC will be realized at the Energy & Health Campus (EHC), in the vicinity of the current reactor (the High Flux Reactor) and the future PALLAS-reactor. The NHC will be complementary to the FIELD-LAB of NRG and other labs on the EHC. The accessory advantage will be the integrated supply chain and, consequently, the efficient handling of materials, nuclear fallout of irradiated products, radioactive transport, and waste, and the benefit of existing nuclear knowhow and experience present within the different nuclear companies at the EHC.
Together with national and international partners, the companies PALLAS and NRG cooperate in the field of the production and development of medical isotopes for the health of millions of patients every year. Two weeks ago the two companies announced the formation of a new organizational structure (“personele unie”). This new structure, the start of the NHC and the development of FIELD-LAB are a significant boost for the establishment of a shared future strategy pertaining to the further development and production of medical isotopes.