The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has 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 power 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 Edlow International will expire on Dec. 31, 2023, rather than the end of 2026 as requested in the company’s July 2016 amended application.
In its original May 2016 application for a roughly 10-year license, the radioactive materials transport specialist said it would begin shipping the highly enriched uranium to the research reactor as soon as March 1, 2017, in amounts of less than 5 kilograms. Edlow International President Jack Edlow on Thursday declined to discuss any changes to the shipping plan under the approved license.
This was the largest HEU export authorization in five years from the NRC, and would involve sufficient material for five nuclear weapons, according to Alan Kuperman, coordinator of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project at the University of Texas at Austin. Kuperman has for years warned of the dangers of shipping weapon-usable material to civilian facilities in foreign countries, often highlighting the NRC’s role in the process. In a press release Tuesday, he noted that ISIS operatives were believed as of November 2015 to have taken hours of video of a high-level SCK-CEN official.
“Although I’m gratified that NRC reduced the duration of the license, I’m disappointed that it is still so long and that the Commission let stand the amount of HEU in the license, which is the biggest in 5 years and thus sends a terrible message that the United States is no longer serious about HEU minimization,” Kuperman told NS&D Monitor by email.
As the last year of the license is a cushion period, exports should end by the end of 2022, he said. That puts added pressure on SCK-CEN to convert the reactor to proliferation-resistant low-enriched fuel, since it cannot be assured of another HEU export license, Kuperman added.
Kuperman in August 2016 filed a petition to intervene in the NRC’s licensing consideration, along with requesting a public hearing on the matter, specifically arguing that the amount of HEU to be exported be limited and the duration of the license curtailed to three years. He emphasized the potential terrorism threat posed by the uranium, and said the license would breach the Schumer Amendment to the 1992 Energy Policy Act, which allows HEU exports to foreign reactors only when no alternative low-enriched fuel is available.
The NRC, though, ruled Kuperman failed to prove a sufficient interest to intervene in the matter or the value of a public hearing.
The commission, which currently has three of a possible five members, also found that the export plan would meet statutory and regulatory requirements under the 1954 Atomic Energy Act: adhering to the act’s nonproliferation criteria, including that any non-nuclear-weapon state that receives material place all peaceful nuclear activities under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards; that it obeys the Schumer Amendment; and that it not be “inimical to the common defense and security” of the United States.
Kuperman made the case that the Belgian reactor could be converted immediately to use LEU silicide fuel, so approving the export of the highly enriched uranium would breach the Schumer rule. However, the U.S. State Department, which worked with the NRC on the license application review, determined there is no LEU silicide fuel assembly that has been ruled to function within BR2’s reactor conditions. Testing would require five to seven years, according to State.
SCK-CEN has committed to converting the reactor away from HEU fuel. The facility could be converted to use LEU silicide fuel by 2022-2023, or LEU molybdenum fuel by about 2028, the NRC said. In either case, it needs fuel sooner than that to continue its nuclear power plant safety research and medical isotopes production missions.
Still, Kuperman said the NRC’s acknowledgement that the reactor could be updated to use LEU silicide fuel means the end is in sight for U.S. shipments of highly enriched uranium to Belgium.
On the security threat posed by the HEU, Kuperman said in his petition the export license could increase the danger that rogue actors might intercept the material and that exports might produce “a stockpile of HEU abroad,” according to the NRC ruling. The agency countered that Kuperman had not demonstrated that there was insufficient security at the reactor. It noted that the State Department, in consultation with the Pentagon, had found that physical security at BR2 was “adequate” to prevent theft, sabotage, or terrorist acts. NRC staff also determined that “this export would not be inimical to the common defense and security of the United States,” the commission said.
