Under the category of keeping the pressure on, House Minority Leader John Boehner last week wrote to President Barack Obama urging him to make good on past promises to support a federal loan guarantee needed to finance a uranium-enrichment plant in Piketon, Ohio.

The letter from the West Chester Republican to Obama cites an Oct. 16 Dispatch story about the decision by the Department of Energy to withhold the initial $30 million of a promised $45 million in research funding while the energy department reconsiders its rejection of the loan-guarantee application.

USEC, the company building the $3.5 billion plant on the site of the shuttered enrichment plant in Piketon, said that it cannot get the financing needed to finish the project without the requested $2 billion loan guarantee.

In his letter, Boehner also requests a copy of an energy department-commissioned report examining the commercial viability of the USEC technology.

Also last week, the Republican-controlled Ohio Senate passed a resolution supporting USEC receiving the loan guarantee.

Compiled by Jonathan Riskind and Jack Torry of The Dispatch Washington Bureau.