Research reactor operator still wants money from NRC; NRC still says ‘no’

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission this week said again it will not pay millions of dollars to the owner of a California-based imaging reactor who claims agency negligence ruined his business.

Despite claims to the contrary this month by David Slaughter, president of Aerotest Operations, there is no “ factual or legal basis” for paying the San Ramon Calif., company $2 million in cash, plus $4.5 million in credit for future NRC services, reads a May 28 letter to Slaughter from Brooke Clark, NRC’s deputy general counsel.

Slaughter has been threatening to sue NRC for about a year and has been trying since 2019 to get the agency to help fund the repair of the company’s 1960s-vintage, 250-kilowatt Aerotest Radiography and Research Reactor (ARRR), which Slaughter acquired in 2017 from a Swedish company.

In all that time, Slaughter has not taken the NRC to court. He had not filed suit as of Thursday.

NRC, for its part, has now said twice that Slaughter has shown no evidence to back up his claim that lax NRC oversight and negligence by the previous owners of the ARRR helped fatally damage the reactor’s fuel rods and sink Slaughter’s plan to restart Aerotest’s neutron imaging business.

Slaughter laid out his latest claims in a May 17 letter to the Clark, published this week by the agency in a package of documents about the dispute.

Slaughter said that since the NRC last denied his claim in May 2023, the agency has published a number of documents, including a report by its inspector general, that support his claim that “poor decisions by [Aerotest Operations] operating staff compounded with inadequate and/or nonexistent NRC oversight … led to the fuel damage suffered by Aerotest.”