The members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Monday unanimously approved a license for the Department of Energy to export nearly 5 kilograms of weapon-grade uranium to Europe for production of medical isotopes.
The four commissioners offered no comments on the matter before or after a roll-call vote on the memorandum and order. The document also rejects requests from four stakeholders for hearings to contest or further consider the export of highly enriched uranium (HEU).
“[H]aving reviewed all four petitions and the record before us, we conclude that granting a hearing in this proceeding would not be in the public interest or assist in our statutory decisionmaking,” according to the memorandum. “Holding a hearing to acquire additional information beyond what has been already provided thus far is unnecessary.”
The commission also determined “that the application satisfies all applicable statutory criteria based on the existing record.”
In August 2019, DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) applied for approval to ship 4.7 kilograms of uranium enriched to 93.35% to Belgium’s Institute for Radioelements (IRE). The material, generated at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee, would be used for manufacturing the isotopes molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) and iodine-131 (I-131)
A facility in France would employ the material for production of HEU targets, which would then be irradiated at research reactors in Belgium, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and Poland. The Institute for Radioelements would extract molybdenum-99 and iodine-131 from the targets at its production plant in Belgium.
Four petitions for intervention and hearings were filed, from commercial isotope producers Curium and NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes; the nongovernmental Nuclear Threat Initiative; and Alan Kuperman, founder and coordinator of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project at the University of Texas at Austin.
The petitioners broadly expressed concerns that approving the license would undercut efforts to end use of proliferation-risky highly enriched uranium in isotope production, while disfavoring companies that have made the costly conversion to using low-enriched uranium or established other means for production.
They noted that the American Medical Isotopes Production Act of 2012 (AMIPA) established a Jan. 2, 2020, end date for exports of highly enriched uranium for medical isotope production in other countries. However, Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette on that date exercised a clause to push back the sunset date – though for only two of the possible six years. At the time, Brouillette said U.S. patient needs exceeded the amount of Mo-99 provided globally without use of highly enriched uranium.
Molybdenum-99 decays into the isotope technetium-99m, which is used in more than 40,000 medical procedures daily in the United States, according to the NNSA. For three decades, United States was fully reliant on foreign providers of the isotope. Beloit, Wisc. -based NorthStar is currently the only domestic provider, though a number of other companies are advancing their own facilities.
The NNSA has said HEU shipments would be made intermittently through Dec. 31, 2021. The Institute for Radioelements said this is the last batch of U.S. highly enriched uranium needed before it completes its own conversion to use of low-enriched uranium for production. It is the last of four major foreign producers to make the switch to LEU.
The Belgian company had said as late as July 2019 that it intended to complete the conversion from HEU to LEU targets for Mo-99 production by the close of this year, the NRC said. However, the timeline for the switch for iodine-131 stretches into the second quarter of 2022.
“While it is disappointing that IRE was unable to meet its intended deadline for conversion of its isotope production to LEU-based technologies, we hope and expect that they will be able to do so by the 2022 deadline described in the NRC decision,” Laura Holgate, vice president for materials risk management at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, said in a statement to RadWaste Monitor.
The Nuclear Threat Initiative had been concerned by the timing of license application, given what was then an imminent clsoure date for HEU exports for isotope production, Holgate said. That issue has since been resolved, and the NRC order addressed some questions that could have been discussed at a hearing.
“What we really were concerned about was removing the incentives that AMIPA creates for conversion to non-HEU-based isotope production methods,” Holgate, former U.S. envoy to the United Nations in Vienna, said in a subsequent telephone interview. “Now that AMIPA’s deadline on exports has been extended for two additional years, we want to be sure that there’s no other HEU export that gets sent out under that extension.”
The NRC commissioners directed agency staff to authorize initial export of 2 kilograms of highly enriched uranium. The National Nuclear Security Administration is required to file a status report by Jan. 4 of next year regarding the amount of material shipped in 2020, along with additional amounts to be exported before the license expires. That is intended to ensure that IRE is receiving only the quantity of HEU it needs.
The NRC was not swayed by several arguments put forth by the petitioners against the export license.
All the petitioners made the case that IRE had access to targets not using highly enriched uranium. NorthStar and Kuperman both argued that low-enriched uranium targets would be available to IRE as of this year, obviating its need for the weapon-grade material. The commission acknowledged that the Belgian firm could complete the regulatory process for LEU-based molybdenum-99 production by the middle of this year. However, production of that isotope is inextricably intertwined with output of iodine-131, and that regulatory process is not due to wrap up before June 2022. Given that situation, IRE will employ one production line using HEU and one employing LEU until conversion is complete, the order says.
“NRC simply asserts without proof that ‘the production processes for Mo-99 and I-131 production are inseparable.’ But of course they are separable,” Kuperman said by email on Tuesday. “IRE could produce its small amount of I-131 from a small amount of HEU targets while producing its large amount of Mo-99 from a large amount of LEU targets.”
Kuperman’s argument that recent practice at the NRC and the intent of the American Medical Isotopes Production Act should limit export to a single year’s worth of HEU was also rebuffed: “No statutory or regulatory requirement limits HEU export licenses to one year’s worth of HEU.”
The export also meets the nonproliferation criteria under various sections of the Atomic Energy Act, the order says. For example: Any nation receiving U.S. special nuclear material as a non-nuclear-weapon member of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty must keep their nuclear activities under full safeguards by the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency. That is the case for Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, and the Czech Republic. France is a nuclear-weapon state under the treaty.
