DOE Loan Guarantee

[therealville]

Is anyone familiar with this program? I am specifically interested in USEC's loan guarantee and the chances of them gettin it...

[Keln]

I work at USEC, and I can say, unfortunately, I am very familiar with the program. Two days ago the DOE announced that they will be denying the loan guarantee for USEC. Everyone is pretty dumbfounded since we jumped through every hoop they asked us to. Apparently the DOE is not interested in a domestic source of enriched uranium. Barring any miracles (like independent investors), the ACP will get mothballed (again), and when Paducah is too old to keep operating, we'll have to depend on all enriched Uranium from the French and the Russians. They both use centrifuge technology, the US is still using old gas diffusion technology which is very inefficient. The DOE's decision is completely mind-boggling.