URENCO USA Says Significant Inventory On Hand
Kenneth Fletcher
RW Monitor
3/21/2014
While the Nuclear Energy Institute is warning lawmakers of the potential impacts of sanctions under consideration on Russian low enriched uranium, URENCO USA says there is significant inventory on hand. The White House is considering including LEU among sanctions against Russia, and this week NEI circulated a document among lawmakers detailing potential impacts of such a move. “Interruption of deliveries of enriched uranium from Russia during 2014 and 2015 would represent a serious threat to refueling outages at U.S. nuclear energy generating facilities,” states the document obtained by RW Monitor. Notably, a large portion of USEC’s supply of LEU for its customers is of Russian origin through a supply agreement with TENEX. “U.S. utilities have contracts for receipt of enriched uranium from Russia in 2014 or 2015. For these companies, the contracted quantities average over 20 percent of their needed supply. For some companies, however, contracted supply from Russia may represent 40 percent or more of their needed requirements,” the document states.
But URENCO USA, which operates an enrichment plant in New Mexico, says it has LEU inventory on hand. When asked to comment on the issue, URENCO USA President Melissa Mann said in a statement: "In the post-Fukushima market, there are significant inventories of LEU from both primary production and secondary supply available in the US. In our case, the LES plant in New Mexico continues to bring additional cascades on-line, current capacity is 3.6 million SWU/year and growing, and is in a position to offer reliable and competitive enrichment services for near and mid-term delivery." NEI and USEC declined to comment on the issue this week and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.
