Reflections on the Past and Future of INMM

I attended the first INMM Annual Meeting in 1960 where I wasone of the nine speakers on the entire program. My interest inINMM stemmed from the fact that I worked for Nuclear FuelServices Inc. (NFS), a company that produced specialty nuclearmaterials, including uranium compounds, metal, and alloys at alllevels of enrichment. NFS also processed uranium scrap, particularly93 percent enriched material. In those days all uranium wasowned by the U.S. government. You could lease it from the governmentbut you had to pay a use charge amounting to about 4percent of the value of the material/year, plus pay for what waslost or consumed. Thus, in our work our customers had to pay forany losses that we sustained when processing government-furnisheduranium into the form desired by the customer. As part ofthe competitive process prevailing at the time, we had to quoteboth a fixed price and a guaranteed maximum loss associated withour processing. If we lost more than quoted, we had to pay.Moreover, the customer generally added the value of the guaranteedmaximum loss to the processing price in evaluating bids—and competition was fierce (three to four companies providedsimilar services to those of NFS). The loss situation was evenmore complicated when we processed scrap for uranium recoverybecause the scrap uranium content was heterogeneous.