Uranium conversion services company ConverDyn is still pushing a court to restrict the Department of Energy’s uranium transfers after DOE recently cut the level of those transfers, according to a court filing this week. ConverDyn sued DOE last year alleging that the Department’s plans to increase its excess uranium transfers would have an adverse material impact on U.S. industry. Last month, DOE moved cut the transfers, which are used in part to pay for cleanup at the Portsmouth site, and asked the court to dismiss the suit as moot. The court subsequently asked ConverDyn to show cause for the suit in light of the transfer reductions. But ConverDyn is claiming that the Department could again increase its transfers at any time, and asks the court “to at least partially cure the harm caused by the earlier transfers by restricting future transfers independent of any finding regarding the Secretary’s present compliance with the Act,” according to its June 2 filing in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
DOE’s latest Secretarial Determination cut the transfers from 2,705 metric tons of uranium transfers per year in the May 2014 determination down to 2,100 metric tons, which ConverDyn calls a “token reduction.” In the 2015 determination DOE “leaves open the possibility of making transfers at the levels authorized by the 2014 Determination should DOE again find it convenient to take advantage of the higher transfer levels authorized therein,” ConverDyn’s filing states. The situation also “falls squarely within the mootness exception for issues that are capable of repetition yet evading review,” the filing states. “The duration of any one Secretarial Determination is, as it was in this case, too short to be fully litigated. And, there is reasonable expectation that ConverDyn will be subject to the same action again.”
