The National Nuclear Security Administration wants to ship some 3 pounds of weapon-grade uranium abroad for eventual conversion into medical isotopes, according to a license application the semiautonomous Energy Department stockpile agency filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission last week.
The unalloyed metal covered by the application is a roughly 93-percent concentration of U.S.-origin uranium-235 that would initially be shipped to AREVA NP in southeast France from the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
AREVA would then transport the material to Belgium, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, and Poland, according to a Dec. 12 export license the Nuclear Regulatory Commission posted online. The metal will be converted into low-enriched uranium targets, which would be subsequently be used to create medical isotopes, according to the NNSA’s application.
Shipments to France would begin no sooner than March 16, 2018, and end by Nov. 30 of the same year, according to the application. The license would expire on Dec. 31, 2018.
Some critics oppose shipping weapon-grade uranium out of the country on the grounds that it could lead to proliferation of either nuclear weapons, or so-called dirty bombs: relatively crude devices that use conventional explosives to spread radioactive elements across highly populated areas.
