Unplanned Curium Contamination at Maryland Heights Medical Isotope Facility Reported

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Operations Center posted an event notification on February 19, 2026 reporting an unplanned contamination incident at a Curium facility in Maryland Heights, Missouri that involved a Mo-99/Tc-99m generator. The notice characterizes the matter as a non‑agreement state event and identifies Curium as a radiopharmaceutical / isotope producer; the extracts supplied do not include casualty, exposure, or release quantities.

The provided materials do not reproduce the full text of the NRC Operations Center event report, and they do not list an event report number, contamination measurements, or response actions taken at the site. The source material explicitly links the incident to a Mo-99/Tc-99m generator, a device central to medical isotope production, but contains no information on affected shipments, hospital impacts, or personnel exposures.

Federal Register guidance cited in the supplied materials frames the regulatory expectations for operators. The materials quote that "Operators are required to file additional telephonic or electronic reports to NRC to confirm or revise the initial estimates of the number of fatalities or injuries, amount of product released, or extent of damages." The same Federal Register excerpt stresses that PHMSA's incident reporting regulations are intended to ensure agencies are alerted "at the earliest practicable moment so that emergency personnel or investigators can be dispatched quickly to [help] mitigate the consequence of such an event."

The Federal Register excerpt uses a historical example to underline consequences of reporting failures: "On February 23, 2018, an incident occurred on a gas distribution system in Dallas, Texas, resulting in one fatality, injuring four other people, and causing major structural damage to a residence." That passage also notes two related incidents two days earlier that produced second-degree burns and significant structural damage, and that the operator "did not provide an immediate notification to the National Response Center (NRC) of either incident as required by 49 CFR 191.5 or file a written incident report with PHMSA."

The regulatory environment also contains active debate over notification rules. The supplied materials include a petition excerpt noting: "The petition requested that the NRC amend 10 CFR 50.72, 'Immediate Notification for Operating Nuclear Power Reactors,' by removing its nonemergency notification requirements." The same excerpt states, "Currently, 50.72 requires licensees to notify the NRC one, four, or eight hours after the occurrence of a nonemergency event, depending on its nature."

For reporters and community members seeking the full event record, the Federal Register metadata and NRC document access instructions in the supplied materials identify key retrieval paths. The GovInfo excerpt lists DATES: February 19, 2026 and asks requesters to "Please refer to Docket ID NRC–2025–0841 when contacting the NRC about the availability of information regarding this document." The materials list Bridget Curran as a contact for Docket questions at 301–415–1003 and Bridget.Curran@nrc.gov. NRC ADAMS access guidance includes the ADAMS accession ML24326A350 and PDR reference staff contact numbers 1–800–397–4209, 301–415–4737, and PDR.Resource@nrc.gov.

The NRC’s public calendar in the supplied excerpts shows active agency business in mid-February 2026, including a Feb 18, 2026 news release entry and a Feb 10, 2026 enforcement item I-26-001 proposing a $9,000 fine against a Puerto Rico medical facility. A contemporaneous industry notice in the supplied materials confirms that "the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission ('NRC') will hold a public meeting on February 19, 2026, to discuss the NRC staff’s review of Hadron’s Quality Assurance Program Description ('QAPD') Topical Report in support of the Company’s Halo Micro-Modular Reactor ('MMR') licensing pathway." The NRC event notification for the Curium incident, the full ADAMS record and any statement from Curium will be determinative for regulators and for any assessment of impacts to Mo-99/Tc-99m supply; those documents are available via Docket NRC–2025–0841 and ADAMS accession ML24326A350.