Washington (Platts)--10Feb2012/422 pm EST/2122 GMT

Three US lawmakers want Energy Secretary Steven Chu to formulate a plan by February 28 for the Department of Energy to produce uranium for commercial nuclear fuel from a stockpile of uranium "tails" stored at the Paducah uranium enrichment facility in Kentucky.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senator Rand Paul, and Representative Ed Whitfield, all of Kentucky, urged Chu in a February 9 letter to use existing DOE authority to enrich the uranium before the plant is "forced" to stop operating in May, when plant operator USEC's power supply contract expires.

USEC warned employees in December that Paducah may close because USEC had not reached agreement on a new contract to buy electricity, a deal on re-enriching the tails, or a determination that there would be sufficient demand for enriched uranium produced at Paducah.

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The tails, now being stored at the site, are leftover from the enrichment process. That process separates uranium into two streams: one with a higher concentration of the fissile U-235 isotope needed for reactor fuel, and tails, which have a lower concentration.

Re-enrichment would subject the tails to the process again, boosting the U-235 concentration in one stream while further depleting it in the other.

The legislators, citing the Government Accountability Office, said re-enriching the tails could generate "billions in revenue" and could partially offset the cost of placing the Paducah plant in cold storage.

They said they have worked closely with the uranium mining and conversion industries, which supply uranium to enrichment facilities, to forge an agreement on re-enriching the tails that would provide "long-term certainty in their respective markets." And they said "continued inaction is indefensible."

Paducah, built in the 1950s, uses gaseous diffusion to produce enriched uranium. USEC had planned to replace Paducah by building the American Centrifuge Plant in Ohio. Centrifuges require much less energy, and therefore can operate at lower cost. But USEC has not yet been able to secure a DOE loan guarantee to help offset the estimated $2.8 billion cost of constructing the new plant.

--Maureen Conley, newsdesk@platts.com

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