US NRC Suspends General License Authority to Export Radioactive Material and Deuterium to Russia

Mechanism

Before this order, exporters could ship source material, special nuclear material, byproduct material, and deuterium for nuclear end use to Russia under a general license -- no case-by-case NRC review required, per 10 CFR 110.21-110.24. The order strips that automatic authority specifically for Russia-bound shipments; every such export now needs an individually reviewed specific license under 10 CFR 110.31, which the NRC can deny.

This sits alongside, but is legally distinct from, the Commerce Department's BIS export-control actions against Russia from the same period (the EAR/CCL foreign-direct-product rules filed in this register under 2022-02-24-us-bis-ear-russia-ccl-fdp-controls and related entries) -- this order runs through NRC's separate Atomic Energy Act licensing authority under 10 CFR Part 110, not the EAR.

Downstream implications

• Any US supplier of enriched uranium, nuclear-grade byproduct material, or

deuterium to Russian civil-nuclear buyers now faces a licensing bottleneck with a plausible denial outcome, not just a paperwork delay.

• Sets a template the NRC reused in August 2023 against China (see

2023-08-14 order, same 10 CFR 110.21-110.24 mechanism) -- a fast, non-EAR lever for suspending nuclear-material general licenses to a named country.

Open questions

• No public NRC data located on how many general-license shipments to Russia

were actually flowing before the suspension, so the trade volume displaced is not quantified here.