Action 61

French operators (CEA, Framatome) are part of the Heracles EU-funded consortium to develop alternative technologies to highly-enriched uranium. The consortium developed in particular H2020 project such as the Heracles-CP (development on sound scientific understanding of the irradiation behaviour of UMo and advancing production techniques for dispersion fuel) from 2015 to 2019, LEU FOREvER (advancing production technology for dispersion and monolithic fuels and paving the way for high density U3Si2 fuels) from 2017 to 2021 and the EU-Qualify (research on medical isotopes) from 2020 to 2026.

Framatome has started cooperation with the Technical University of Munich in 2019 for the conversion of the FRM II reactor to low enriched uranium.

In 1978, the Department of Energy established the Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactors (RERTR) program to help minimize civilian use of highly enriched uranium. The U.S. Government’s Global Threat Reduction Initiative and subsequent 2016 reorganization into the NNSA’s Office of Material Management and Minimization continued these efforts. Since 1978, at least 109 research reactors and medical isotope facilities worldwide were either converted to LEU or confirmed shutdown.

Prior to the current Review Cycle, the NNSA also achieved success in helping Mo-99 production facilities in converting to high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) and supports the establishment of domestic supplies of Mo-99 without the use of proliferation-sensitive HEU. The NNSA’s progress on this issue prompted a joint certification in 2021 by the Secretaries of Energy and Health and Human Services that there was now enough worldwide supply of the medical isotope molybdenum-99 made without using HEU to meet the needs of patients in the United States, thus triggering a congressionally mandated ban on exports of HEU for foreign medical isotope production.