Amendments added Wednesday to federal funding legislation being considered on the Senate floor would provide $35 million more for U.S. programs for production of a key medical isotope and recovery of usable nuclear reactor fuel from spent fuel.
The measures are among more than 80 amendments submitted to the “minibus” appropriations bill covering energy and water development programs, among others. The Senate is still debating the legislation and had not scheduled a vote on the bill, or a vote to curtail debate, at deadline Wednesday for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.
Senators voted 87-9 in favor of an amendment from Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) to add $15 million for a material recovery demonstration project to show it can provide uranium fuel for advanced nuclear reactors. Naval reactors could produce up to 100,000 tons of used fuel, which the Department of Energy projects could cost roughly $100 billion to dispose of, Crapo said Wednesday morning on the Senate floor.
“However, advanced nuclear reactors have the potential to reuse this spent nuclear fuel and to reduce the overall disposal cost,” he said.
The Senate also voted 95-2 in favor of an amendment from Sen. Tammy Baldwin, (D-Wis.) to add $20 million for cooperative agreements and laboratory support at the National Nuclear Security Administration to expedite U.S. manufacturing of molybdenum–99.
The semiautonomous Energy Department agency has provided matching funds to re-establish a long-absent domestic production capacity for the isotope, which decays into another isotope, technetium-99m, used in medical imaging and other procedures. The NNSA said in May it would provide another $40 million in cooperative agreements to companies seeking to produce the isotope.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued two construction licenses to Northwest Medical Isotopes, of Corvallis, Ore., for a production site in Columbia, Mo., and SHINE Medical Technologies for its Janesville, Wis., plant. SHINE is expected to file for an operations license this fall.
“Medical isotopes are critical to American health care, and our Wisconsin entrepreneurs are working to deploy a Made-in-America source of this much-needed diagnostic tool for patients and families,” Baldwin said in a press release. “This amendment gets our domestic production back on track to ensure health care providers can source this critical medical isotope domestically and reduce our reliance on foreign sources.”
