A group of 11 nuclear security and health experts on Wednesday urged the heads of the U.S. Departments of Energy and Health and Human Services to find that the federal government no longer needs to export weapon-grade uranium for foreign production of the medical isotope molybdenum-99 (Mo-99).
Allowing exports to continue would present a continued threat to nuclear security and undermine efforts by U.S. companies to establish a domestic production capacity that does not involve use of highly enriched uranium (HEU), the issue specialists said in a letter to Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.
The American Medical Isotopes Production Act (AMIPA), enacted in January 2013, established a seven-year deadline for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to stop approving license requests for export of highly enriched uranium for isotope production.
However, that action would be based on a determination from the DOE and HHS secretaries that the United States has enough Mo-99 produced without HEU targets for patient needs, and that exports of domestic material for production can stop. If the agency chiefs conclude otherwise, exports can be extended for up to six years.
The Department of Energy is taking public comments on the question through Dec. 27. The deadline for a decision under the schedule set by AMIPA is Jan. 2, 2020, according to the experts’ letter.
“I don’t have inside info on the DOE/HHS review. I assume it is ongoing,” Alan Kuperman, one of the signatories and head of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project at the University of Texas at Austin, said by email Thursday. “I doubt they will meet the Jan 2 certification deadline, given that the public comment deadline is Dec 27.”
In a statement Thursday, a spokesman for DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration said the agencies are “working closely” with Health and Human Services to ensure the United States has a sufficient supply of Mo-99.
Molybdenum-99 decays into the isotope technetium-99m, which is employed in 40,000 medical diagnostic and therapeutic procedures each day in the United States, including for heart-disease diagnosis and cancer treatments.
The United States for decades relied on foreign producers for its domestic needs, though one U.S. company is now generating the isotope and others are preparing to follow suit at their own plants. Three of the four foreign suppliers for the United States also now do not use highly enriched uranium in their manufacturing processes.
“U.S. patient needs can be met by a combination of the three foreign producers that avoid HEU targets, the fourth foreign producer that is converting to [low-enriched uranium] targets, and a U.S. producer (NorthStar in Wisconsin) that is already producing without HEU targets,” the experts wrote. “In addition, several U.S. companies that avoid HEU targets are expected soon to start commercial production of Mo-99, facilitated by past NNSA cost-sharing, including under AMIPA.”
The National Nuclear Security Administration provides the HEU for foreign Mo-99 production through its Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee. However, as part of its nuclear nonproliferation mission, it has also in recent years provided $138 million in cost-sharing funds to companies that seek to re-establish a strong domestic manufacturing capacity, the issue specialists noted.
From 2014 to 2018, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved 20 of 21 license applications for export of highly enriched uranium. Ten of those were for material to be used in production of medical isotopes, encompassing 54.2 kilograms of weapon-usable plutonium.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is reviewing an NNSA license application for export of nearly 4.8 kilograms of uranium enriched to 93.35% for isotope manufacturing by Belgium’s Institute for Radioelements. That company is the last of the top U.S. providers to use HEU, though it is converting its operation to use proliferation-resistant low-enriched uranium.
Kuperman, NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes, isotope producer Curium, and the nongovernmental Nuclear Threat Initiative have all petitioned the NRC for hearings on the license application.
“Mr. Secretaries, if you fail to make the joint certification required under AMIPA, the NRC would be permitted to approve future applications of HEU for targets, which would both increase nuclear security risks and abet foreign companies to undercut the commercial viability of domestic U.S. producers of medical isotopes,” according to the letter to Brouillette and Azar.
Signatories to the Dec. 18 letter include Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association; Laura Kahn, a research scholar for the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University’s Wilson School of Public and International Affairs; and Frank von Hippel, assistant director for national security during the Clinton administration at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
