BIS Revises EAR to Align With Nuclear Supplier Group Decisions

The Bureau of Industry and Security made several changes to the Export Administration Regulations this week to align its controls with decisions made at the multilateral Nuclear Suppliers Group in 2019 and 2022. The amendments, outlined in a final rule effective Aug. 18, revised five existing Export Control Classification Numbers under the Commerce Control List to alter or clarify the scope of certain controls and make technical fixes to other ECCNs.

Several changes clarify the parameters of various ECCNs, including ECCNs 2B209 and 2B228, which include items “applicable for the manufacture of gas centrifuge rotors.” Those items include “flow forming machines, spin forming machines capable of flow forming functions,” rotor fabrication and assembly equipment, rotor straightening equipment, “bellows-forming mandrels and dies.”

BIS revised the EAR so that controls under those ECCNs now apply only to items with “internal diameters of between 75 mm to 650 mm, as opposed to the previous internal diameter parameters of between 75 mm and 400 mm.” The agency said the revision “ensures that the coverage of gas centrifuge rotor and of flow forming machines that can be used to produce gas centrifuge rotors is harmonized with the control parameters of the centrifuges.”

Another change amended ECCN 1B231 -- tritium facilities or plants -- by clarifying “that only hydrogen isotope purification systems fall within the scope of the entry,” among other changes. BIS said the previous ECCN language “could have erroneously been interpreted to control all purification systems in the form of metal hydrides and not just those purification systems of hydrogen isotope.”

A third change removed ECCN 1B229 -- water-hydrogen sulfide exchange tray columns and internal contactors -- from the CCL. BIS said those items are now subject only to the export control jurisdiction of the Energy Department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The final rule also amends ECCN 3A233, which covers certain mass spectrometers. BIS said the description for items detailed under the heading of ECCN 3A233 included the “outdated unit” of “atomic mass units,” and the agency replaced that phrase with the “modern and widely accepted unit ‘u’ or ‘Dalton.’” BIS added that the “new mass unit is more strictly defined and accepted by the scientific and legal communities, removing a possible ambiguity in the text as it was previously written. There is a min[u]scule difference” in “the masses of the two units.”