The Department of Energy is considering “all options” in its review of the national security requirements for a domestic enrichment capacity, DOE Deputy Secretary Dan Poneman said Friday at the Nuclear Deterrence Summit. DOE is undertaking a assessment of its options during a three-month extension of a cost-share program supporting USEC’s American Centrifuge Plant ending in April. Poneman cited the importance of a domestic enrichment capacity for needs including tritium production and naval reactor fuel. “As we have watched the ACP program these many years we have been very focused on that option as one in which a lot of investment and a lot of hard work has gone into to create that sort of unencumbered material. Anybody obviously reading the newspapers knows that the company has challenging circumstances, so we are doing what you’d expect us to be doing, which is to be looking at all options,” Poneman said.
USEC has struggled financially, announcing last year that it intends to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and raising questions about DOE’s continued support of the company through a research, development and deployment program. “We are looking obviously at the investment that we’ve made and the run time in the RD&D program, there’s a lot of data and value that’s been invested in that, so that’s obviously an option,” Poneman said. “But we are going to have to do the responsible thing to do, look at all the available options to make sure that we can continue to fulfill the requirements of our deterrent and the requirements that we have access to that kind of material.”
The omnibus spending bill that passed Congress last month included $62 million for the USEC program, and made an additional $56.65 million contingent on a DOE cost-benefit analysis of potential domestic enrichment technologies for national security needs. Taunja Berquam, minority staff on the House Energy & Water Appropriations Subcommittee, said Friday: “The Secretary requested that we provide the three months and give them latitude and time to do a review of what the real requirements are for tritium, what we need and when we need it, and what the best way is to secure that capability going forward. I think that is our expectation, that they do a rigorous analysis of what they actually need.”
