The National Nuclear Security Administration did not audit more than $10 million paid to one of four companies manufacturing Molybdenum-99 for use in medical procedures, the Department of Energy Inspector General said last week.
In an effort to spur domestic production of Molybdenum-99 the NNSA awarded four 50-50 cost-share, cooperative agreements in 2019 for $30 million apiece. As of April 2021, the Department of Energy Inspector General (IG) found $33.23 million paid to all four contractors producing Mo-99. The IG also found that $10.25 million of that amount, paid to a single contractor, was not audited.
“This issue occurred because NNSA does not have a policy to monitor and ensure that awardees are complying with audit requirements,” the IG report says. “We reviewed four cooperative agreements and found that NNSA did not always ensure that compliance audits were performed, as required, when expenditures exceeded $750,000. … NNSA has an opportunity to improve its internal controls related to the invoice approval process by ensuring that alternate personnel assigned to the task understand and follow the established process.”
The IG also questioned $34,313 paid to the awardee due to erroneous charges, which NNSA officials said was the result of a single “premature invoice approval by an inexperienced grants officer.”
As Mo-99 decays, it produces the isotope technetium-99m, which is used in medical procedures including some that can help diagnose heart disease and cancer, according to the NNSA.
Historically, Mo-99 was produced by irradiating highly enriched uranium (HEU) in nuclear reactors and then processing the irradiated material to extract the Mo-99. Because HEU is a proliferation-sensitive material that, if diverted or stolen, could be used as a component of a nuclear weapon, Congress, in the American Medical Isotopes Production Act of 2012, ordered the NNSA to create a domestic isotope industry that did not rely on HEU.
