Ailing reactors and their isotopes: radiopharmacy and nuclear research in Belgium (1990-2020)

This article studies the relation between research reactors, the development of nuclear research centres and the pharmaceutical industry in the recent history of nuclear medicine. While existing scholarship has rightfully highlighted how medical applications served as a useful argument to de-militarize the image of large-scale nuclear research infrastructure during the Cold War, this study extents this perspective beyond the Cold War era. Using the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre as a case study, this article highlights how their orientation was negotiated within economic and political considerations. From the 1990s onwards, therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals experienced increasing attention, while the amount of radioisotope-producing reactors was decreasing. In an era that had become more critical of nuclear infrastructure, this article shows how the production of radioisotopes became a social-political argument in the preservation of test reactors.