Promethium recycling is not like magnet recycling or metal scrap recycling. In practice, "promethium recycling" splits into two very different things: recovering Pm-147 from nuclear waste streams (upstream recovery) and managing disused sealed sources (downstream reuse or disposal).
Promethium "recycling" is usually either isotope recovery from reactor/fission waste or return-to-supplier management of sealed sources, because Pm-147 is not a mined material and it decays away on a practical timescale.
This is the closest thing to a true circular loop for promethium: you harvest Pm-147 from existing nuclear material streams instead of producing it solely via dedicated target irradiation.
DOE's isotope program states Pm-147 is currently being extracted from a plutonium waste stream, and also produced via irradiation of Nd-146.
ORNL described extracting "pure promethium" from Pu-238 production leftovers, framing it as recovering an in-demand isotope while also reducing problematic constituents in the waste stream.
DOE budget documents explicitly mention extraction of promethium-147 for nuclear batteries from plutonium-238 waste streams.
The "feedstock" is not ore. It's legacy or ongoing nuclear streams that already exist. The value is unlocked through hot-cell chemistry, not mining.
Most promethium in commerce sits inside sealed sources used in instruments (like thickness gauges) or in regulated luminous/safety devices. When that equipment reaches end-of-life, you typically do not "recycle the element" the way you would with metals.
IAEA guidance and training materials repeatedly list the same decision tree:
A key IAEA point: returning a disused source to a supplier is a good option when the supplier is authorized and capable of managing it safely and securely.
It usually means one or more of:
Pm-147 decays by beta emission to stable samarium-147, with a half-life around 2.6 years. That creates a unique "time lever" in waste planning: activity drops significantly over a decade-scale horizon, which can change packaging, storage classification, and disposal economics for certain inventories.
This does not mean you can ignore regulation. It means time is part of the management plan.
In the US, NRC rules explicitly cover licensing for manufacture/initial transfer of self-luminous products containing promethium-147, and NRC guidance on general license uses mentions promethium-147 in luminous safety devices (with restrictions).
Promethium is not present in consumer volumes like NdFeB magnets. Collection and separation from random scrap is not a thing.
Promethium is handled as a radioisotope product, not as promethium metal for alloying. Its value is tied to activity, purity, encapsulation, licensing, and supply program constraints.
Whether sources can be returned depends on supplier authorization, transport packaging, and cost. IAEA materials highlight that packaging and transport costs can be substantial, which becomes a practical barrier.
Countries that build centralized strategies (registries, conditioning programs, disposal pathways) reduce the risk of orphaned sources and bottleneck inventories.
When programs like DOE/ORNL can extract Pm-147 from waste streams, that can improve supply availability while simultaneously improving waste stream disposition characteristics.
If someone claims they are "recycling promethium," ask:
No. Promethium is supplied as a radioisotope (mostly Pm-147) and managed through sealed-source lifecycles and nuclear material recovery, not scrap metallurgy.
Recovering Pm-147 from nuclear waste streams (for example, Pu-238 production leftovers) and reintroducing it into authorized sealed-source supply chains.
It reduces activity over time (half-life ~2.6 years), which can affect management choices, but it does not remove the need for licensed handling, conditioning, and compliant disposal pathways.