Brian Bradley
NS&D Monitor
11/20/2015
In perhaps a last-ditch effort to save the Piketon, Ohio, piece of the American Centrifuge Project, Ohio House of Representatives Speaker Cliff Rosenberger and state Rep. Terry Johnson (R) are calling for the Ohio legislature to officially reiterate to Congress that moving all of Centrus’ American Centrifuge Project (ACP) operations from Piketon to Tennessee would be a bad national investment and would hurt the several specialized employees and scores of unemployed residents living near the area.
Rosenberger and Johnson on Tuesday introduced House Concurrent Resolution 30, which would urge the U.S. Congress and the Energy Department to reverse the decision to stop funding the Piketon portion of ACP. It would send copies of the full text of that resolution to U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives, U.S. Senate President Pro Tempore Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Secretary of the Senate Julie Adams, DOE, every member of the Ohio U.S. congressional delegation, and Ohio news media, according to the legislation.
ACP contractor Centrus Energy in September confirmed that DOE would no longer provide funding for the Piketon piece of the program, and officials have said all ACP operations will be limited to development activities at Oak Ridge, at a cost of $35 million per year. Centrus employs about 300 technical and other staff in Piketon. ACP is an advanced uranium enrichment facility intended to produce low-enriched uranium for commercial nuclear reactors.
The resolution notes that Centrus has been developing ACP technology since 2002, DOE has invested $3 billion on the technology over 10 years, and that discontinuing funding for the project would have an “irreversible impact on future enrichment capability at the American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio, and on the specialized workforce and the communities in and around Piketon.”
Furthermore, the bill notes that cutting funding will cause the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars in income and sales tax revenues to communities housing several unemployed residents.
Specifically, the bill’s sponsors introduced it to the Ohio House Energy and Natural Resources Committee, where the legislation will undergo further consideration.
