American Medical Isotopes Production Act Of 2009

Floor Speech

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Mr. MARKEY of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the American Medical Isotopes Production Act will safeguard Americans' health care and our national security. By helping to establish production of critical medical isotopes here at home, the American Medical Isotopes Production Act will end our dependence on aging nuclear reactors outside of our borders. And by responsibly ending the export of weapons-usable, highly enriched uranium for medical isotope production, this bill will give a much-needed boost to U.S. efforts to permanently convert all reactors away from the unnecessary and dangerous use of bomb-quality material.

The bipartisan bill authorizes $163 million for the Department of Energy to evaluate and support projects in the private sector or at universities to develop domestic sources of the most critical medical isotopes. This is necessary because we currently face a daunting supply shortage caused by technical problems at the aging foreign reactors upon which we are presently reliant. With a robust and reliable domestic production capacity, the 50,000 daily procedures which normally occur in this country, including for cancer scans and bone and brain imaging, will be secure.

The nuclear nonproliferation benefits of this bill are significant and they are timely. Shockingly, the United States still allows for nuclear weapons-grade highly enriched uranium to be exported to other countries for medical isotope production. This 1950s-era policy simply does not work in a post-9/11 world. It is dangerous, unnecessary, and it must come to an end. We simply cannot afford to have additional nuclear weapons materials in circulation when we know that terrorists would like nothing more than to steal or buy such dangerous materials.

Fortunately, according to the National Academy of Sciences, there are no technical or economic reasons why medical isotopes cannot be produced with low enriched uranium.

Currently, nuclear medicine is practiced mostly in the most developed countries, like the United States. But that is changing. And as more countries practice more nuclear medicine, more medical isotopes will need to be produced. In preparation for this, it is absolutely essential that we stop using highly enriched uranium for this purpose.

Previously, the United States spread these dangerous technologies around the world, including to some surprising places. For instance, the United States built a reactor in Iran which we fueled with weapons-grade uranium. Today, the Iranians want to use this reactor to produce medical isotopes, and negotiations are ongoing on this point. Fortunately for the world, the Iranian reactor was converted to low enriched uranium by Argentina in the 1980s. Converting reactors away from the use of highly enriched uranium, both at home and abroad, is very much in our national security interest. And that is exactly what this bill will do.

By sending a clear signal that the United States will no longer export this dangerous material, H.R. 3276 will accelerate U.S. efforts to convert reactors around the world from highly enriched to low enriched uranium. In fact, this has already begun, as the Department of Energy testified in September that all the medical isotope production reactors around the world which still use highly enriched uranium have approached the Department of Energy to ask for assistance in converting to low enriched uranium in the past few years.

This bill has the support of a wide variety of stakeholders, including the unanimous support of industry and the nuclear medical community, and nuclear nonproliferation advocates.

This is also a bipartisan bill, and I would like very much to thank my friend Fred Upton from Michigan for working in such a bipartisan fashion. This is the way it should be done, and we thank him and we thank the other members of the minority and the majority for working towards this conclusion. You could not have a more excellent partner. Mr. Waxman and I and the other members of the committee want to note the incredible cooperation that did exist.

This bill will help to ensure that America has a reliable domestic source of the radio isotopes needed for life- saving medical procedures, it will close a dangerous loophole in our Nation's nonproliferation policy by phasing out exports of highly enriched uranium, and it does so without increasing the Federal deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

I urge a ``yes'' vote on this important bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. MARKEY of Massachusetts. The gentleman is correct. Neither this provision nor the bill as a whole give any preference whatsoever to any technology type. The purpose of this provision is to give the Department of Energy the greatest number of options for dealing with the medical isotope crisis while also maintaining the incentive for reactors to convert to low enriched uranium fuel.

The bill includes several conditions on reactors using the exemption to ensure that their conversion to low enriched uranium fuel is successful. I fully expect the Department of Energy to give full consideration to every application for these funds, and to do so in an equitable and technology-neutral manner.

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