Citing someone who might be interested in a public hearing about the decision, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is allowing more time for complaints about a license amendment that Nuclear Fuel Services needs to purify uranium for nuclear-weapons programs, the commission wrote Tuesday in the Federal Register.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has extended the window to request a hearing to this coming Halloween, Oct. 31. NRC had planned to cut off requests to intervene in the licensing process in June, but someone requested multiple extensions, citing “hardships related to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic,” the commission wrote in Tuesday’s notice.
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency, has said it could issue Nuclear Fuel Services, Erwin, Tenn., a sole-source contract to purify uranium metal on Nov. 30. The company, a subsidiary of BWX Technologies, Lynchburg, Va., has demonstrated uranium purification for the NNSA under a sole-source, $57-million contract announced in March 2021.
NNSA is upgrading its uranium processing infrastructure at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and has said it will need to move some uranium purification work outside the Y-12 fence as the agency shuts down old equipment and installs new equipment.
The local government in Oak Ridge has complained that the move could take jobs away from Y-12. The NNSA says that is not true.