Actinium-225 Tri-Lab Research Team receives Secretary’s Honor Achievement Award

The Actinium-225 Tri-Lab Research Team, established by the DOE Isotope Program, was honored with Secretary’s Honor Achievement Awards from the Department of Energy. This is the DOE's highest form of employee recognition. 

Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, Deputy Secretary David Turk, and Under Secretary Geri Richmond presented the award to the Actinium-225 Tri-Lab Research Team in a virtual awards ceremony, which honored 53 teams across DOE. The Tri-Lab Research team includes members from Oak Ridge, Brookhaven and Los Alamos national labs and the National Isotope Development Center.

The team was honored “for their amazing research and development efforts in increasing the global availability of this important isotope, a radioisotope long sought after in the medical community for its cancer-fighting potential.”

Richmond called the team’s success in faster and more frequent actinium-225 production “a heroic enduring collaboration” over a decade that brought about a “renaissance in the field."

About the Ac-225 Tri-Lab Effort

The Ac-225 Tri-Lab Effort was established in 2015 by the DOE IP and researchers at Brookhaven, Los Alamos, and Oak Ridge National Laboratories to research and develop new production routes for Ac-225. Using facilities at Brookhaven and Los Alamos, thorium-232 targets are fabricated then irradiated in proton accelerators. Historically, chemical processing occurred at ORNL exclusively; however, in 2023, Brookhaven established chemical processing capabilities. Now the two sites alternate production campaigns, and the purified product is dispensed and shipped to customers. The goal of the Ac-225 Tri-Lab Effort was to leverage DOE IP facilities, capabilities, and expertise to fill the void in supply for the medical and research Ac-225 markets.

The Tri-Lab Effort distributed more than 1100 millicuries of accelerator-produced Ac-225 to evaluators and has been in routine production since 2019. End-users can purchase accelerator-produced Ac-225 through the National Isotope Development Center.