Uranium conversion services provider ConverDyn has reached a settlement in federal court with the Energy Department, ending the company’s lawsuit alleging its business could suffer “irreparable harm” as a result of DOE increasing uranium transfer activities in 2014.
Colorado-based ConverDyn sued DOE following a 2014 secretarial determination (an official decision handed down by the energy secretary), which boosted the amount of uranium transfers within the domestic fuel market from a self-imposed 10 percent guideline to 15 percent. The transfers helped the department pay for cleanup at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio.
ConverDyn, in its lawsuit at the time, claimed that DOE’s policy change would cost it about $20 million a year in lost revenue, as a result of the department taking away business. According to a Uranium Producers of America report from 2014, DOE market analysis showed an 8 percent decrease in the uranium spot price resulting from the department’s increase in uranium transfers, thus slashing domestic uranium industry revenues and threatening jobs.
The 2014 determination allowed about 2,700 metric tons of transfers per year, but in 2015 the department cut that amount to 2,100 metric tons, an amount Converdyn described as a “token reduction.”
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia announced the settlement agreement in a Sunday filing, but terms of the deal were not available.
“ConverDyn is pleased to have reached a settlement with the U.S. Department of Energy,” ConverDyn spokesman Peter Dalpe said by email Thursday. “The company is satisfied that the legal action and resulting settlement have produced a more open process, allowing an opportunity for the private sector to provide critical input before a Secretarial Determination is made. The legal action has also had the net effect of reducing the volume of DOE uranium transfers, which have negatively impacted ConverDyn and the U.S. uranium industry. Given that DOE has a finite supply of material, the company felt there was little to be gained by pursuing the legal action further and is happy to have the matter closed so it can resume a productive relationship with DOE.”
A DOE spokesman by email Thursday acknowledged that the department had agreed to ConverDyn’s “voluntary dismissal of the lawsuit,” but did not offer further comment on the matter. The department will now solicit public comment for the next potential secretarial determination for uranium transfers in 2017, according to the spokesman.
“As the Department prepares each Secretarial Determination, it considers its nuclear defense and cleanup missions, market conditions, and significant input from the public,” the spokesman wrote. “We expect to continue to engage stakeholders as we evaluate DOE’s uranium management program. The first request for information for such a determination was published in the Federal Register on July 19, 2016.”
