The U.S. Department of Energy should be required to “show cause” why the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should not dismiss its license application for shipment of weapon-grade uranium to Europe, according to a company that opposes the request.
Failing that, Curium and other parties should be authorized to intervene in the NRC proceeding, according to a motion filed on Nov. 6.
The Energy Department’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) on Aug. 5 filed a license application with the federal nuclear regulator for export of nearly 4.8 kilograms of uranium-235 enriched to 93.4% to Belgium’s Institute for Radioelements (IRE). The material from the NNSA’s Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee would be employed at facilities in several European nations for fabrication and irradiation of targets to produce the medical isotopes molybdenum-99 and iodine-131.
The application by Sept. 21 drew petitions to the NRC for intervention from Curium, a London-based nuclear medicine company that operates from St. Louis in the United States; NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes, a medical isotope company based in Beloit, Wisc.; the Washington, D.C.-based nongovernmental Nuclear Threat Initiative; and Alan Kuperman, founding coordinator of the University of Texas Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project.
The petitions highlighted the potential proliferation dangers of exporting highly enriched uranium to foreign countries even as other companies have made the costly switch to using proliferation-resistant low-enriched uranium in their production processes. With NRC approval, the petitioners would argue their cases at an adjudicatory hearing.
The Energy Department missed the Oct. 21 deadline to respond to any of the petitions, Curium said in its motion last week.
Given the agency’s “intentional decision not to participate in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission hearing process” to defend the license application, Curium said it “respectfully requests that the Commission issue an order for DOE to show cause as to why its Application should not be terminated, or in the alternative, admit the unopposed petitions to intervene in this proceeding.”
The NRC on Thursday did not discuss its schedule for ruling on the motion, the intervention petitions, or the license application. “NRC is currently reviewing the various filings,” agency spokesman David McIntyre said by email. The Commission cannot discuss or provide substantive comments on any of the relevant filings at this time.”
In a Nov. 8 statement, the NNSA said “The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s review of the license application for the National Institute for Radioelements in Belgium (IRE) is proceeding according to the normal process. DOE/NNSA and the interagency cannot comment further at this time, given the nature of that process.”
While the NNSA has generally remained above the fray, the other parties have argued their positions intensely.
In a Sept. 26 letter to NRC Chairman Kristine Svinicki, IRE CEO Erich Kollegger said Curium, NorthStar, and the Nuclear Threat Initiative intervention petitions “are either not in accordance with the facts, or misinterpreting IRE’s intentions.”
He highlighted the technical complexity of the company’s conversion to isotope production using low-enriched uranium, which should be completed by the end of next year. That included having to completely redesign the targets used in manufacturing, Kollegger said.
The European research reactors and other facilities that comprise IRE’s supply chain all “have very high Security standards,” he wrote, playing down the proliferation danger.
Curium, acting on behalf of NorthStar and the Nuclear Threat Initiative, responded with a brief Oct. 10 note to the NRC: “Petitioners disagree with a number of statements in IRE’s letter, including IRE’s justification for needing highly enriched uranium. The Petitioners reiterate from their petition requests that the appropriate forum to address the factual and legal concerns raised in this proceeding is in a hearing properly briefed and before the Commission.”
The NRC, from 2014 to 2018, approved 20 of 21 applications for export of highly enriched uranium. Ten of those were for production of medical isotopes. Those totaled licensing requests for 54.2 kilograms of HEU, with 32.9 kilograms dedicated for IRE.
The NNSA, which counts nuclear nonproliferation among its missions, has in recent years approved more than $150 million in cost-sharing funds for NorthStar and other U.S. companies that are developing non-HEU production of molybdenum-99.
Kollegger noted that IRE has been supplying up to 40% of the U.S. market for Mo-99. The isotope decays into technetium-99m, which is used across the world in medical imaging.
