HOUSE PANEL TO MARK UP WHITFIELD TAILS BILL IN JANUARY

By ExchangeMonitor

The House Energy and Commerce Committee has scheduled a markup for Jan. 18 on the “Energy and Revenue Enrichment Act,” which was authored by Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) and would require the Department of Energy to establish a pilot program to re-enrich a portion of its inventory of depleted uranium hexafluoride tails. The proceeds from the sale of the re-enriched material to be used for cleanup activities. “Over the past few months, I have been working to address the concerns of my colleagues and other stakeholders involved in this important legislation and I am happy to report that we have crafted a bill that addresses those concerns,” Whitfield said in a statement yesterday. “I am pleased to see that the full Energy and Commerce Committee has agreed to take up my bill, in regular order, that will preserve jobs and generate billions of dollars in revenue for the federal government.”

In the latest version of the legislation, DOE would be required by March 1, 2012, to enter into a contract for up to two years for re-enrichment services. Funds raised through the sale of the re-enriched uranium would be placed into the federal uranium enrichment D&D fund. While earlier versions of the bill had sought to limit the re-enrichment work to the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, operated by USEC, the latest version does away with the bulk of the language that had been seen as potential barriers for competitors such as URENCO USA to bid. The latest version also maintains hard quantity caps on how much uranium DOE could sell, barter or transfer to others in a given year—no more than 6.5 million pounds annually during 2012-2015 and no more 5 million pounds annually post-2015.

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