URANIUM: Boehner asserts omnibus funding for (bankrupt) USEC plant isn't an 'earmark'

[kristopher]

URANIUM: Boehner asserts omnibus funding for USEC plant isn't an 'earmark'

Hannah Northey, E&E reporter E&E Daily: Friday, January 17, 2014

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) yesterday asserted that millions of dollars tucked into fiscal 2014 omnibus appropriations bills for an embattled and soon-to-be-bankrupt uranium enrichment project in Ohio does not constitute an earmark.

"I don't know what the specific issue is here, but people can file for bankruptcy to reorganize their company," Boehner told reporters during a news conference on Capitol Hill. "This is an Energy Department research project that's been going on for a long time."

...

Specifically, the bills include $62 million in fiscal 2014 funding for the company's centrifuge technology demonstrations, as well as $56 million that would be available after DOE submits a cost-benefit analysis and request for transfer authority, according to USEC.

...the company has come under fire for months from lawmakers like Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who has called on the government to stop financing USEC's operations. Those calls grew louder last month after the company said it plans to file a voluntary Chapter 11 petition in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware and that talks with the government about a $2 billion loan guarantee were on hold (Greenwire, Dec. 17, 2013)...

http://www.eenews.net/stories/1059993105

[PamW]

1. Not USEC's only customer...

Last edited Tue Jan 21, 2014, 10:58 AM - Edit history (1)

The commercial nuclear industry in the USA is not USEC's only customer. USEC also has a captive customer in the US Government. The US Government needs domestic enriched Uranium to fuel reactors to make Tritium for US nuclear weapons. Tritium, an isotope of Hydrogen is needed in Hydrogen bombs, and has to be continually renewed since Tritium is radioactive with a 12 year half-life. So the Government won't let USEC go out of business.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/17/business/energy-environment/usec-enricher-of-uranium-for-us-seeks-bankruptcy.html?_r=0

One reason that the Energy Department might pay to do so — or that Congress might be persuaded to give more aid to the company — is to continue using uranium that USEC enriches to make tritium, a form of hydrogen that is the h in the h-bomb. Uranium enriched by USEC is used to make tritium at a civilian reactor in Tennessee.


PamW

[kristopher]

2. "The Un-American Centrifuge Plant"

Neighbors for an Ohio Valley Alternative
http://ecowatch.com/2013/07/12/uranium-titan-tumbles/

Uranium Titan Tumbles

EcoWatch | July 12, 2013
By Geoffrey Sea

[Read Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV and Part V of this series]

High drama hits the world of the former U.S. Enrichment Corporation as a shareholder rebellion drubs the company stock price, restructuring and bankruptcy rumors swirl, safety issues delay USEC’s departure from Kentucky, a “left-right” anti-USEC coalition of Non-Governmental Organizations emerges and charges of USEC’s direct involvement in illegality proliferate.

USEC used to be a world giant in the supply of nuclear fuel. Once wielding monopoly power over the domestic supply and international pricing of enriched uranium, its motto touts “A Global Energy Company,” even as USEC struggles with the expense of closing its last production facility in the non-metropolis of Paducah, Kentucky. (Metropolis is over the river in Illinois.)

But in a spectacular sell-off signaling bizarre irregularities in the way the company has been managed and subsidized, USEC Inc.’s stock price has tumbled in a pattern known to market analysts as a “falling knife.” On the Friday after July 4, normally a sleepy trading day, the rush to sell USEC stock caused $2 gaps between ask and bid prices, ending with a 40 percent drop in value for the day. After double-digit percentage share-price declines at enormous volume on July 3, July 5 and July 8, (thirty times average volume on July 8), the total market valuation of the company is now about $16 million, ranking it as Lilliputian.

USEC’s bonds, which come due for payment in 2014, if not sooner, fell to about twenty cents on the dollar. The company’s common shareholders, including many past and current employees, have lost 99 percent of value since 2007, 80 percent of value since the start of 2013 and 67 percent of value since June 24, when the Paducah City Council and the McCracken County Fiscal Court met in joint session to cope with USEC’s abandonment of that community....

Article continues with much more background on this cluster&%k here: http://ecowatch.com/2013/07/12/uranium-titan-tumbles/

[PamW]

3. Another "fact-devoid" hit piece?

I SERIOUSLY question the validity of the statements made in the piece referenced above, since at least one I know to be ABSOLUTELY FALSE.

The above "ecowatch" piece makes the claim:

USEC stock has nose-dived before, especially when the company’s “Atomic Vapor Laser Isotope Separation” technology was revealed in 1999 to be vaporously fraudulent and inexcusably wordy. (“We will see Elvis before we see AVLIS” became a common saying in the USEC-dependent communities).

The above claim is ABSOLUTELY FALSE.

The AVLIS technology was NOT developed by USEC; but was developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, for which LLNL received high scientific acclaim and awards. LLNL even built / operated a pilot AVLIS plant on the LLNL campus:

https://www.llnl.gov/str/Hargrove.html

LIS was originally developed in the 1970s as a cost-effective, environmentally friendly technology to supply enriched uranium for nuclear power plants and special nuclear materials for national security needs. Over the years, funding of about $2 billion was invested to develop the technology at Lawrence Livermore and to successfully demonstrate it with an integrated, full-scale pilot plant. This step was achieved in the early 1990s for special nuclear materials separation and in the late 1990s for commercial uranium enrichment applications.
The uranium enrichment process was being tested successfully at Livermore's pilot plant when the United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC) suspended funding for the project in mid-1999.

and

Technology Was Proven
A pilot enrichment plant, completed at Livermore in the fall of 1997, became the focal point for the LIS team composed of experts from Livermore, Bechtel National Inc., Duke Engineering, On-Site Engineering, Babcock and Wilcox, Lockheed Martin, AlliedSignal Corp., and USEC. The team moved forward with testing commercial-scale equipment. Important improvements over time included making key separation upgrades for better performance and reliability, introducing deformable optics for laser beam uniformity, and substituting compact diode-pumped solid-state lasers for copper lasers to energize the all-important dye lasers. This latter change significantly reduced costs and space requirements.

With all the success and acclaim of AVLIS accruing to LLNL; it hardly seems accurate to call the process "fraudulent" and "wordy" ( that's a strange adjective to apply to a scientific process to begin with ).

Because of the above known ERROR in the ecowatch article; I suspect it's just another "hit piece" and the other claims in the article probably have no better pedigree than the one I know to be FALSE.

PamW