Uranium conversion company Converdyn has filed suit against the Department of Energy in an effort to stop the Department’s uranium transfers, which the company claims will cost it $40.5 million in lost revenue over the next two years. In May a DOE Secretarial Determination declared that its ongoing uranium transfers would have no negative impact on the market, though a market impact study commissioned by DOE found that the transfers would have an immediate and ongoing negative impact, Converdyn’s court filing in the U.S. District Court for D.C. noted. “The Secretary’s Determination is arbitrary and capricious, and otherwise not in accordance with law. The Determination is unsupported by the administrative record before the agency, ignores and is contrary to evidence in the record, is not supported by adequate reasoning or explanation, and does not consider or ignores comments from the domestic uranium mining, conversion, and enrichment industries,” the filing states.
DOE is planning several upcoming uranium transfers in July, August and September, and the complaint asks the court to halt those transfers in addition to declaring the Secretary’s Determination invalid. It also seeks to strike DOE’s recent decision to lift a uranium transfer limit that had been set at 10 percent of the domestic fuel requirement. Converdyn runs the sole U.S. uranium conversion plant, which converts “yellowcake” uranium oxide into uranium hexafluoride gas in preparation for the enrichment process. The suit comes after last week a Government Accountability Office report raised several legal questions with DOE transfers that took place in 2012 and 2013. “DOE has also violated legal requirements by authorizing transfers of conversion and enrichment services, which are not permitted under the USEC Privatization Act, and by receiving less than the fair market value for the material transferred or sold,” the Converdyn filing states.
