The chair of a key Senate subcommittee has criticized the Department of Energy for taking on $44 million in liability for a Maryland-based company that wants to launch a uranium enrichment plant in southern Ohio without keeping Congress apprised.

 

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, said Energy Secretary Steven Chu failed to keep her abreast of the department’s plan to assume $44 million worth of liability for USEC’s uranium “tails” – a byproduct of uranium enrichment. She said she fears that the January decision fails to protect the U.S. taxpayer and “raises significant concerns.”

 

“I request that you explain the benefit of this tails transfer to the federal government and what precautions you have taken to protect the taxpayer,” she wrote in a letter dated Jan. 23.

 

The decision to assume liability for the “tails” was hoped to keep the plant afloat after Congress failed to approve $150 million for research and development funding for the plant late last year.

 

In her letter, Feinstein said she spoke with Chu in December and had supported $150 million in federal funding for a research and development project at the plant, with specific conditions: She requested new leadership at the American Centrifuge Plant and that the government maintain intellectual property rights tot the gas technology at the plant if the research and development program fails to demonstrate commercial viability.

She said that during conversations in November and December, the Energy Department discussed the possibility of transferring tails liability from USEC to the federal government. But she said Chu promised not to do so unless Congress indicated full support for the research and development project. He later moved forward with the transfer anyway.

 

Feinstein is the latest lawmaker to express concern about federal funding for the plant. Last week, a group of western lawmakers concerned about the impact on uranium mining expressed concern about the plan to transfer liability for tails. And a Massachusetts lawmaker, too, has expressed concern about the viability of the plant. The Ohio congressional delegation, meanwhile, has been largely supportive of USEC’s bid to launch a uranium enrichment plant near Piketon, Ohio.