Last shipment of uranium cleared for export here
What’s believed to be the last controversial shipment of U.S. weapons-grade uranium to Canada has been approved, according to new documents.
A licence to export to 7.56 kilograms of highly enriched uranium (HEU) to the Chalk River Laboratories, northwest of Ottawa, was signed last week by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The HEU is to be used as “target” material and irradiated in the National Research Universal (NRU) research reactor to produce six varieties of radioactive isotopes for life-saving nuclear medicine.
The federal government has vowed to end decades of regular NRU isotope production by Oct. 31, 2016, and shutter the 58-yearold reactor in March 2018. The move requires approval of an operating licence extension, to be decided next spring by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.
In the 17-month interim, the government has left open the door to the resumption of isotope production only, “in the unexpected circumstances of (global production) shortages.”
In recent years, the U.S. has shipped seven kilograms of weapons-grade HEU — enriched to 93.35 per cent uranium-235 — to Chalk River approximately once every 12 months.
The material is secretly transported to Eastern Ontario by road and under heavy guard from the Y-12 National Security Complex, a nuclear-weapons production facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn. It appears seven kilograms of HEU amounts to about a year’s supply of NRU target material. Under the licence, it must be shipped before the end of the year.
Pressure mounted on Canada in recent years over the use of HEU, rather than isotope production using safer, low-enriched uranium (LEU).
Critics have accused the federal government of failing to honour the spirit of its non-proliferation commitments and not doing enough to reduce the threat of nuclear theft and nuclear terrorism.
Australia, Argentina, and South Africa already use LEU to produce medical isotopes, with Belgium and the Netherlands to follow.