The Government Accountability Office has accepted a request by Reps. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Michael Burgess (R-Texas) to investigate the Department of Energy’s support of USEC. Due to staffing issues, though, the government watchdog group won’t begin work on the study for approximately three months. Because Markey is the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, there was never a serious question about whether the GAO would take up the study.
Markey and Burgess have been longtime critics of DOE’s support for USEC, which included an $88 million boost to the company’s American Centrifuge Project to keep the project afloat through November. The support was announced a day after Markey and Burgess asked the GAO to investigate DOE’s support of USEC. “We believe that this support is unlikely to result in the successful commercialization of USEC’s domestic uranium enrichment technology, may have been and may continue to be undertaken in contravention of various laws, and is additionally unjustifiable using assertions of this project’s importance to national security,” Markey and Burgess wrote.
