Research and the medical isotopes being produced at Mizzou was a main topic of discussion between Columbia business leaders and elected officials at last fall’s Chamber visit to Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Columbia Chamber of Commerce president Matt McCormick spoke this weekend on 939 the Eagle’s “CEO Roundtable” program:
“Whenever you start taking a look at what the University is trying to do here with our current research they have but also what’s the future of the nuclear reactor and what does that bring. And radio isotopes and all the great things it’s doing,” Mr. McCormick tells listeners.
Mizzou officials and then-Missouri Governor Mike Parson broke ground in October 2023 on the $20-million expansion of the MU Research Reactor (MURR). The three story addition is expected to expand MURR’s research and medical isotope production space. MURR says 1.6-million patients each year benefit from the medical isotopes produced at MURR. The MU Research Reactor is the nation’s only producer of four medical isotopes used in lifesaving treatments for liver, thyroid, pancreatic and prostate cancer.
Meantime, Chamber president McCormick is impressed with the new $220-million dollar I-70 Rocheport bridge, describing it as generational:
“One side of what we have now is the same width is what the old bridge was. So I mean the amount of traffic, the amount of goods, services and people that that bridge can now move across safely … and it’s generational,” says Mr. McCormick.
The new Lance Corporal Leon Deraps I-70 Missouri River bridge at Rocheport is now open. The state Department of Transportation (MoDOT) says more than 37,000 vehicles cross the bridge daily. That includes about 8,800 tractor trailers.
