With the Department of Energy working on a new Secretarial determination concerning transfers of excess uranium to help fund cleanup work and nonproliferation efforts, DOE yesterday launched a new public comment period on a proposed list of factors identified for analysis of the impacts DOE transfers could have on the uranium mining, conversion, and enrichment industries. The Department “believes that whether the effects of a given transfer constitute an ‘adverse material impact’ should not depend on a quantitative bright-line test, but rather should be based on an evaluation of potential impacts by examining a number of factors,” DOE said in a notice issued yesterday. Such proposed factors include market prices; realized prices of current operators; production at existing facilities; employment levels in the industry; changes in capital improvement plans and development of future facilities ; and long-term viability and health of the industry. DOE is accepting public comment through April 6.
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