The Department of Energy’s Isotope Program could be leaving money on the table, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Friday that suggests the program has been lax in analyzing how it sets prices for the more than 300 different isotopes it supplies, including 10 provided by the National Nuclear Security Administration. The program sets prices for commercial markets to at least recover full costs, but the GAO said that the program has not assessed the value of isotopes to customers or defined the factors it should consider when setting the prices for commercial isotopes. Isotope prices for research efforts are priced differently. “As a result, the program does not know if its full-cost-recovery prices are set at appropriate levels so as not to distort the market, and it may be forgoing revenue that could further support its mission,” the GAO wrote.
DOE Office of Science Director Bill Brinkman acknowledged that the program is continuing to address challenges it has faced since it was transferred from the Office of Nuclear Energy in 2008, but he took issue with the suggestions that the program hasn’t fully analyzed its pricing policies and noted that the program is in the process of finalizing an update to its 1990 Pricing Policy Memo. “The Isotope Program expends considerable effort in establishing prices, including full bottom-up activity-based costing for isotope production, interactions with the isotope user community, and negotiations with isotope customers,” Brinkman wrote in a response to the report. “Likewise, the ‘value of isotopes to customers’ has always been considered in pricing development.”