Given the Department of Energy’s new determination cutting its uranium transfers, a court is asking ConverDyn to show cause for the uranium conversion company’s ongoing lawsuit challenging the Department’s uranium transfer policy. ConverDyn filed the suit in June 2014, soon after DOE’s decision to boost its uranium transfers to up to 15 percent of the domestic fuel market from a previous 10 percent guideline. The company claimed the increase in transfers, which are used in part to pay for cleanup at the Portsmouth site, would further depress the market and threaten ConverDyn’s long-term viability.
However, DOE last week released a new Secretarial Determination for uranium transfers, which cut the 2,705 metric tons of uranium transfers per year in the May 2014 determination down to 2,100 metric tons. DOE argued that the new determination replaces last year’s action, therefore ConverDyn’s challenge is “moot,” according to a filing with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The Court ordered that ConverDyn “show cause” before June 2 as to why the claims should not be “dismissed as moot,” according to a court order released yesterday.
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