Waste uranium is a treasure trove of valuable radionuclides – including thorium, which can be ‘milked’ for cutting-edge medical use in fighting cancers.
In the century-and-a-bit since their discovery, radionuclides have found a welcoming home in medicine. The unstable atoms that undergo radioactive decay are widely used in diagnostic procedures such as PET and SPECT, where they light up cancers like beacons and illuminate the function and dysfunction of various organs.
Much less usual is their therapeutic use, accounting for fewer than 5,000 procedures in the UK in 2015. However, therapeutic radionuclides are stirring up commercial interest for their potential to treat cancers. They work on a simple principle: radiation ionises cancer cells, damaging their DNA and preventing them from replicating.
Radionuclides tend to be physically placed within the cancer (brachytherapy), which limits treatment to cancers that can be easily accessed from the surface of the body, such as those in the thyroid...