The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Friday approved the export of up to 144 kilograms of nuclear weapon-grade uranium to Belgium.
The fuel elements, enriched to 93.2 percent, would be used to reload the Belgian Reactor No. 2 at the Studiecentrum voor Kernenergie-Centre d’Etude de l’Energie Nucléaire (SCK-CEN). The regulator, though, ruled that the license issued to Washington, D.C.-based radioactive materials transporter Edlow International will expire on Dec. 31, 2023, rather than at the end of 2026 as requested in the company’s July 2016 application.
Edlow would ship the material to Belgium, starting as soon as March 1, 2017, according to the application. The company on Tuesday did not respond to a request for an update regarding its shipping schedule.
This was the largest HEU export authorization in five years, and would involve sufficient material to power five nuclear weapons, according to Alan Kuperman, coordinator of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project at the University of Texas at Austin. In a press release Tuesday, Kuperman noted that ISIS operatives were believed as of November 2015 to have taken hours of video of a high-level SCK-CEN official.
Kuperman in August 2016 filed a petition to intervene in the NRC’s licensing consideration for the HEU export, along with requesting a hearing on the matter. He highlighted the potential terrorism threat posed by the HEU, and argued the license would breach the Schumer Amendment to the 1992 Energy Policy Act, which allows HEU exports to foreign reactors only when there is no alternative lower-enriched fuel available. However, the NRC ruled Kuperman had not proven a sufficient interest to intervene in the case or the necessity of a hearing.
The agency added that there is not yet any LEU fuel that could be used at the Belgian reactor, which is due eventually to convert away from highly enriched uranium fuel. The State Department also determined the exports “would not be inimical to the common defense and security of the United States,” the NRC said.
