(H/T – RadicalRon)
The Knoxville News Sentinel reports that the Department of Energy rejected USEC’s $2 billion loan-guarantee application for The American Centrifuge project, a uranium gas-centrifuge enrichment facility, despite a campaign-era pledge from Barack Obama to support said guarantee. USEC CEO John K. Welch claims that the program met the original intent of the DOE loan-guarantee program; of course, that was before Obama actually became President.
I would have simply wrote it off to the Obama administration’s hatred of American nuclear power and the expiration of yet another campaign promise, but in the course of confirming that gas-centrifuge technology is how the Iranians are working at getting nuclear weapons, I discovered that not only is it considered the enrichment method of the future, with Russia, Japan, Germany, the UK and the Netherlands adopting it, there is a second gas-centrifuge project from Louisiana Energy Services, the National Enrichment Facility.
So, what are the differences between LES and USEC? I haven’t been able to determine whether LES also applied for loan guarantees, but there are two differences between the two companies. First, LES is a wholly-owned subsidiary of European URENCO, while USEC is a Maryland company. Second, there is a donation difference between the officers of LES and the officers of USEC. The USEC donation list is rather Republican-heavy, and features donations from Welch to John McCain. Meanwhile, the LES donation list is rather Democrat-heavy, and features a max-amount donation from PR head Brenda Brooks to Obama.
Revisions/extensions (11:10 pm 7/28/2009) – Fixed the link back to JammieWearingFool.
