A multinational medical isotope company jumped the gun in demanding that the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) “show cause” against termination of its application for a federal license to export weapon-grade uranium to Europe, according to a lawyer for the agency.
In any case, the argument laid out by Curium has no merit, NNSA counsel Zachary Stern wrote in a Nov. 15 motion asking the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to deny the request.
The semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapon branch in August applied for an NRC license to export 4.8 kilograms of highly enriched uranium for use by the Belgium-based Institute for Radioelements (IRE) in production of medical isotopes.
London-based Curium in September filed for an adjudicatory hearing in the application, as did U.S. isotope producer NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes, the nongovernmental Nuclear Threat Initiative, and a nuclear nonproliferation expert at the University of Texas at Austin. They broadly argued that export of HEU poses a nuclear proliferation threat and undercuts companies that have made the expensive conversion to using proliferation-resistant low-enriched uranium for isotope manufacturing.
The NRC has not yet ruled on the petitions. Curium, meanwhile, on Nov. 6 filed another motion urging the commission demand that the NNSA show why its application should not be eliminated. The company based its case on the fact that the federal agency did not file any responses with the NRC to the four hearing and intervention requests.
Stern wrote that Curium does not yet have standing to make such a demand because at this point it remains a petitioner rather than an actual party to the licensing proceeding.
In addition, federal law does not require the NNSA to respond in writing to intervention petitions, according to Stern.
“In this export license proceeding, DOE/NNSA continues to participate in these proceedings, and is awaiting further orders of the Commission as to how the Commission proposes to proceed with its review of DOE/NNSA’s license application,” the lawyer wrote.
Attorneys for Curium fired back on Wednesday in a response to uphold the company’s motion for the NNSA to show cause to sustain the license application. They said the agency filed its response to Curium’s “show cause” request several days past the five-day deadline under the applicable federal regulation. The “highly unusual circumstances” of the case also should support Curium’s filing even though it has not been made a party to the export-license proceeding, the new document says.
“Curium acknowledges that its Motion is an unusual one,” according to its attorneys. “At the same time, however, rarely has an applicant intentionally chosen not to defend its application in response to multiple petitions to intervene—something that actually goes beyond the examples cited in Curium’s Motion. And DOE should not reap the benefits of its inaction by having any disputes in the record construed in its favor.”
