The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission this month issued a license for export of weapon-grade uranium to France to refuel a research reactor.
The agency is considering several similar license applications from the Department of Energy’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration. Each draws scrutiny from nongovernmental nonproliferation advocates who fear terrorists could obtain the highly enriched uranium in transit or at civilian facilities.
The license was issued on Oct. 5 and expires on Dec. 31, 2017. It covers 130 kilograms of uranium enriched up to 93.2 percent, with up to 121.1 kilograms of uranium-235, in broken metal form.
The NNSA is the licensee, with the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) High Flux Reactor listed as the ultimate consignee. The reactor produces neutrons used in a host of projects at the research facility in Grenoble.
The other listed parties to the license are: Consolidated Nuclear Security, which operates the NNSA’s Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee, the point of origin for the uranium; and AREVA, which would provide material transport and reactor fuel fabrication services in France.
The material would be shipped via military transport, Annette Vietti-Cook, secretary of the Commission, said in an Oct. 5 memo.
The NNSA has worked to convert reactors around the world from using HEU fuel to proliferation-resistant low-enriched uranium, which was also a focus of the Obama administration’s Nuclear Security Summit process. ILL in 1998 pledged to study converting its reactor, but that is not expected to happen until 2027-2028. In the meantime, “The operator cannot currently use low-enriched uranium to fuel this reactor and produce the neutrons it needs,” Vietti-Cook wrote.
Separately, the NNSA on Sept. 27 filed a license application with the NRC for potential shipment of 2.8 kilograms of uranium-235, in no more than 3.0 kilograms of uranium, enriched to 93.35 percent, to Canadian Nuclear Laboratories’ Nuclear Fuel Fabrication Facility. The HEU would be used to produce targets for irradiation in the National Research Universal reactor for production of the medical isotope molybdenum-99. However, the export would occur only “in the circumstances of an extended global shortage of … Molybdenum-99, where other alternate technologies or sources are not available,” according to the application.
