The stable isotope market

Market challenge

The stable isotope market faces numerous challenges, driven by growing demand and production difficulties:

 

Growing demand
  • stable isotopes play a crucial role in sectors such as :
  • Medicine : diagnostic applications and advanced therapies;
  • Scientific research : tracing and analysis in various fields;
  • Industry : monitoring of chemical and environmental processes.

 

Complex and costly production

Current stable isotope production processes rely on isotopic separation technologies that are:

  • highly specialised and technologically advanced;
  • limited in terms of speed and production capacity;
  • costly and dominated by a few global suppliers.

    Innovation and growth in the isotope market with the Seruci II Project

    The commercial isotope market, which includes key products such as 13C, 15N, 17O (used in medical diagnostics, tracers, advanced nuclear fuels, and magnetic resonance), and 18O (for positron emission tomography), is currently estimated at around 1 billion euros and is expected to see significant growth over the next ten years.

    Major players in the speciality gases sector have already shown interest in the Seruci II project, which aims to establish the only production unit for enriched stable isotopes in the European Union.

    With the patented cryogenic distillation process, which allows for significant energy cost reductions in towers 350 meters high, the project plans to produce non-radioactive isotopes, such as 10B and 11B, crucial for advanced semiconductors and reducing software errors in data processors of the latest generation.

    This innovative approach is expected to generate annual revenues in the order of tens of millions of euros, positioning our company as a leader in the global market, estimated in billions of dollars, and making a significant contribution to next-generation nuclear fuels and precision medicine through the production of tracers and labelled organic molecules for proteomics and metabolomics.