Two members of Congress from Missouri are calling on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to hold an open hearing on a license application for export of weapon-grade uranium to Europe.
The Department of Energy on July 31 filed the application for export of nearly 4.8 kilograms of highly enriched uranium to the Institute for Radioelements (IRE) in Belgium for use in production of molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) and other medical isotopes.
Sen. Roy Blunt and Rep. Ann Wagner (both R-Mo.) on Sept. 27 wrote a letter to NRC Chairman Kristine Svinicki on behalf of Curium, a London-based nuclear medicine company that operates its U.S. headquarters in St. Louis.
“Based on our constituent’s assertion that IRE’s application for nearly 5 kilograms of HEU for Mo-99 and [iodine-131] production is unwarranted and, if granted, unnecessarily circumvents the intent of the statutory license ban and goes against the directives of Congress, we are hopeful the Commission will grant a public, oral hearing,” the lawmakers states.
The letter addresses issues Curium and other medical isotope providers and nonproliferation advocates have raised in requesting to intervene in the export license proceeding: that shipping HEU to Europe presents an unnecessary nuclear proliferation risk and disadvantages companies that have made the costly conversion to using low-enriched uranium for production.
They focused on the 2012 American Medical Isotope Production Act, which set a January 2020 end date on HEU exports for isotope manufacturing unless the secretaries of energy and health and human services determine the material is still needed for that purpose.
“To date, domestic market place participants like Curium who have duly complied with conversion requirements or implemented non-uranium processes face a twenty percent production efficiency loss from the associated cost of production,” according to Blunt and Wagner.
In brief letters on Monday, NRC Secretary to the Commission Annette Vietti-Cook told Blunt and Wagner that it “would be inappropriate” for Svinicki to respond to their letter while the commission considers the contested license application.
