In a legal settlement announced this week in a regulatory filing, uranium fuel broker and enrichment technology developer Centrus Energy Corp., Bethesda, Md., said it got the millions of dollars it was seeking from the Department of Energy for the old U.S. Enrichment Corp.’s pension fund this week.
Centrus will collect about $43.5 million from DOE, about the full amount for which it sued in 2015 in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, according to a Tuesday 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Centrus is the successor company to the government-owned U.S. Enrichment Corp., which filed for bankruptcy in 2014.
Those interested in helping the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) establish a domestic uranium reserve have one more month, until Oct. 13, 2021, to respond to the agency’s request for information about a potential all-U.S. stockpile of uranium hexafluoride, according to a procurement note posted Wednesday.
Congress ordered the NNSA to establish a domestic uranium reserve as part of an omnibus budget bill for fiscal year 2021. The weapons agency is supposed to work with DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy on the project. The reserve is designed to encourage mining at U.S. deposits.
An atmospheric sounding rocket containing experimental, non-nuclear, nuclear-weapons experiments was scheduled to launch Saturday between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. Eastern time from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
Part of the HOT SHOT program run by the Sandia National Laboratories, the launch will test component level parts that could be used in future nuclear-weapon platforms, or in future non-nuclear, nuclear-weapon flight tests. The launch will stream live online, according to a press release from the NASA-controlled coastal range.
Congressional redistricting has started in Tennessee, and one pundit this week reminded the public that the redrawing of district lines might result in the ouster from office of Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), the current chair of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces subcommittee that writes policy each year for nuclear-weapon sites.
Cooper is one of the state’s two Democratic congressional representative, hailing from the (currently) Democratic Nashville area.
