Babcock & Wilcox has entered the fray in ConverDyn’s uranium transfer lawsuit against the Department of Energy, arguing that stopping uranium transfers scheduled this month would cause significant harm to its downblending business as well as U.S. national security and nonproliferation goals. B&W subsidiary Nuclear Fuel Services is the sole source of highly enriched uranium downblending for the government, and it outlined its concerns in an amicus curiae brief it told a U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia this week that it wanted to file in the case. ConverDyn is seeking a preliminary injunction to stop DOE from continuing its uranium transfers this month because the transfers will cause it “serious and irreparable harm due to irreversible market impacts.”
NFS also produces nuclear fuel for the Navy, and B&W said if that work was halted, cost-sharing between the company’s downblending and fuel manufacturing work would end, increasing the costs for its fuel manufacturing work by millions of dollars. “The cost-sharing provisions of Nuclear Fuel Services’ contracts with the U.S. Government that allocate indirect or ‘support’ costs between the downblending contract and the fuel manufacturing contract would no longer result in cost sharing between these two contracts that are performed at Nuclear Fuel Services’ Erwin [Tenn.) site,” B&W said in a July 15 court filing. “If the Plaintiff’s Motion for a Preliminary Injunction is granted, the costs to both Nuclear Fuel Services and the fuel manufacturing program would thus increase by millions of dollars.”
B&W also said NFS would have to cut its workforce if the downblending work was halted or slowed. Downblending accounts for about 35 percent of the work conducted by NFS at its Erwin, Tenn., plant. “Should the down-blending program be slowed or halted altogether, Nuclear Fuel Services will be forced to eliminate a substantial number of jobs,” B&W said. “A reduction in force by Nuclear Fuel Services will not only directly harm the employees and their families whose jobs are eliminated, but will also negatively impact the community in and around Nuclear Fuel Services’ facility, whose economy is highly dependent on the jobs and revenues supplied by Nuclear Fuel Services.”
Jobs