The Cabinet approved the modernisation of the Maria research reactor at a meeting on Tuesday, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
Afterwards, the government said in a statement that Maria was “Poland’s only functioning nuclear reactor and a research appliance that’s unique in the world,” and stressed its importance “for public health, economy and science.”
The government also said that modernisation was a more viable option than the construction of a new research reactor, which would cost “an estimated PLN 2 billion (EUR 450 million), on top of the cost of dismantling the facility,” the PAP news agency reported.
Poland’s Maria nuclear research reactor
Named after Poland’s two-time Nobel Prize winner Maria Skłodowska-Curie, the Maria nuclear research reactor was designed and built by Polish specialists, and launched in December 1974, the PAP news agency reported.
The 30 MWt reactor is located at the Świerk National Centre for Nuclear Research, some 30 kilometres southeast of Warsaw.
It manufactures key radioisotopes for medical products used by some 17 million people around the world, the PAP news agency reported.
Last year, the government said that one week of Maria’s production of radiopharmaceuticals “supplies 100,000 patients with the means for diagnosis and therapy,” the World Nuclear News website reported.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, scienceinpoland.pl, World Nuclear News