TWO AMENDMENTS ATTACKING URANIUM ENRICHMENT SUPPORT FAIL

By ExchangeMonitor

A pair of amendments to the House Energy and Water Appropriations bill that would have reduced federal support for USEC uranium enrichment activities failed yesterday. Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wy.) offered an amendment aimed at limiting several recently approved Department of Energy uranium transfers, one of which is designed to keep the USEC-operated Paducah enrichment plant running via a uranium tails re-enrichment program. The amendment, which failed 114 to 302, would “prohibit the use of funds to be used to plan or undertake sales or any other transfers of natural or low enriched uranium from the Department of Energy that combined exceed 1,917 metric tons of uranium as uranium hexafluoride equivalent in fiscal year 2013.” The tails re-enrichment program would include the transfer of more than 9,000 metric tons of depleted uranium, while DOE plans to transfer another 2,400 metric tons per year of natural uranium to help pay for cleanup at the Paducah and Portsmouth sites.

And an amendment aimed at stripping funding for a DOE program supporting USEC’s American Centrifuge Project failed yesterday in a 168 to 249 vote after ongoing bitter back and forth on the topic. The provision, which passed by voice vote Tuesday but lost the final recorded vote, would strike the $100 million in funding for a program supporting a research, development and deployment program for domestic uranium enrichment technology. The amendment was offered by longtime nuclear critic Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Tea Party caucus member Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas), who have called the program a “taxpayer bailout of this failing company.” Markey also took part in a heated campaign against USEC funding last month with Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.), whose amendment to strike $150 million in funding in House Defense Authorization legislation was defeated 121 to 300.

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