House committee asks for investigation of domestic competition to Russian non-fuel isotopes

In a letter Monday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate how the Department of Energy can displace imports of Russian isotopes.

“[T]he United States still relies on obtaining several materials and commercially produced isotopes from other, sometimes adversarial countries, like Russia, on which it may not be expedient to depend,” reads the letter from committee leadership, written on committee stationary and distributed by the committee in a press release.

Among other things, the committee asked the Government Accountability Office to report on which isotopes are currently produced, sold or planned to be offered by the DOE Isotope Program, which often sells isotope produced during nuclear weapons work at the agency’s National Nuclear Security Administration.

The Isotope Program sells isotopes used in manufacturing and medicine.

“The DOE Isotope Program has been working for at least a decade to shore up domestic isotope development and free the United States from a position of dependence, but its progress in doing so is unclear,” the committee wrote.