July 11 talk focuses on planned ORNL facility to meet growing demand for radioisotopes

The United States is experiencing a growing demand for made-in-America radioisotopes to meet domestic medical, industrial, research and national security needs. By the beginning of the next decade, Oak Ridge National Laboratory will take a leading role to fulfill the rising isotope demands of U.S. research institutions and government agencies.

Robert F. "Rob" Peacher, a nuclear operations expert with Strata-G LLC, and a part-time consultant to ORNL, will speak on Tuesday, to Friends of ORNL on plans to build and operate a new Radioisotope Processing Facility (RPF) at ORNL by 2032.

Peacher conceived and developed the design of the RPF while employed at ORNL. The goal of the planned facility is to address the ever-growing demand for radioisotopes by the Department of Energy’s Isotope Program.

He will give his talk at noon at the University of Tennessee Resource Center, 1201 Oak Ridge Turnpike. Attendees may bring their own lunch to eat. To view the virtual noon lecture, click on the talk title on the homepage of the www.fornl.org website and then click on the Zoom link near the top of the page describing the lecture.

Peacher submitted the summary below of his July 11 lecture.

“ORNL has a legacy in isotope production and innovation. The lab produces, purifies and ships more isotopes than does any other facility in the world. ORNL provides more than 300 isotopes for medical, industrial, research and national security.

“ORNL will build the Radioisotope Processing Facility (RPF) to address the growing demand for radioisotopes. The number of radioisotopes considered for long-term production by DOE’s Isotope Program has nearly doubled in three years. Yet ORNL and U.S. isotope production infrastructure are already at full capacity, unable to meet the isotope needs of research institutions and government agencies.

“The limitations on aging facilities complicate the issue. To address this problem, DOE’s Office of Science has approved the mission need for the RPF to be built at ORNL. The new Hazard Category 2 nuclear facility will deploy modular hot cells. The modular design can be configured to meet isotope processing needs of today and the future.

“The RPF facility is planned to be fully operational by 2032. By building the RPF at ORNL, the nation will further utilize the High Flux Isotope Reactor capabilities along with ORNL’s extensive radioisotope expertise and existing radioisotope transportation infrastructure to meet the increasing need for radioisotopes.”

Peacher is a consultant to ORNL’s Isotope Science and Engineering Directorate for the RPF project. He retired from ORNL in May 2020 after 33 years of employment. In his last position there, he served as the nuclear infrastructure program manager for the directorate starting in 2017. He was responsible for planning the modernization of ORNL’s aging nuclear infrastructure and the transitioning of transuranic waste management responsibilities from DOE’s Office of Environmental Management to its Office of Science.

Peacher’s 40 years of nuclear experience began in 1979 when he enlisted in the U.S. Navy Nuclear Power Program. In 2006, 20 years after he joined ORNL, he was deployed to Afghanistan with the U.S. Navy Reserve as a chief intelligence specialist, where he served as a collections manager with a joint operations command. He retired from the U.S. Naval Reserve in 2010 as a senior chief intelligence specialist.

Upon return to ORNL from deployment to Afghanistan in 2007, he began serving as a program manager for the lab’s Nuclear Security and Isotope Technology Division in support of programs of ORNL’s Global Security Directorate and the National Nuclear Security Administration.