Senate Appropriators Looking to Provide $110M for American Centrifuge in FY 2015

Senate appropriators are looking to provide $110 million to the Department of Energy in Fiscal Year 2015 to continue supporting the American Centrifuge technology, according to draft legislation obtained by WC Monitor. In May the Department launched a new $118 million program aimed at preserving the American Centrifuge technology while USEC undergoes bankruptcy proceedings. The project is being managed out of Oak Ridge National Lab under a subcontract to USEC. The Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee only made top-line funding numbers public after a markup early this month, and with its version of the bill stalled due to turmoil in the Senate the outcome of the FY 2015 legislation remains uncertain.

 

While the Oak Ridge program only aims to monitor existing centrifuges, the draft legislation specifies that none of the funds “may be used to build a train of centrifuges using domestic enrichment technology for national security needs in fiscal year 2015.” USEC has suggested that the government could support building an enrichment plant using the technology that would solely be used for security purposes such as tritium production. The lawmakers also would call for an assessment of “why the current inventory of available unobligated enriched uranium is not sufficient to meet defense needs” as well as “a cost benefit analysis of each of the options available to supply enriched uranium for defense purposes, including new bilateral agreements.”