The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is allowing the Energy Department to send Belgium only about half the highly enriched uranium by weight the country sought for production of medical isotopes, according to a letter the commission sent to a group of nonproliferation advocates who opposed the transfer.
An export license filed by DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) sought authorization to ship roughly 15.8 pounds of highly enriched uranium (HEU) out of the country for eventual delivery to the Institute for Radioelements in Belgium. However, the NRC approved sending only about 8.1 pounds because another 7.7 pounds of such material was discovered in a French facility that will produce some of the targets the Belgium institute will eventually turn into medical isotopes.
The extra HEU discovered in France was from a previous U.S. export, according to a Tuesday press release from the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project. The University of Texas at Austin-based group published the NRC’s letter on halving the NNSA’s requested export.
The organization was among those that objected to the shipment of HEU to Belgium in the first place, on the grounds that it violated an agreement that country made at the 2012 Nuclear Security Summit to stop producing medical isotopes using weapon-grade materials by 2015.
The NRC, in its letter, said it “currently has no information that suggests that approving this export will undermine the nuclear security enhancements achieved to date as a result of the commitments made during the Summits.”
