U.S. Agencies look at Excess Uranium Inventory

Uranium (Nuclear Minerals) / Exploration, Mining, Marketing, & Acquisitions

Date posted: 03/27/17

The U.S. DOE has asked for public comment on the effects of potential transfers of its excess uranium inventory on the U.S. uranium mining, conversion and enrichment industries. The DOE request was issued the day after the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) raised issues related to excess uranium transfers over the past decade including questions on the DOE assessment of market impact studies, the valuation of depleted uranium tails, and the legality of some transfers. The DOE holds inventories of uranium in various forms that have been declared as excess and not needed for U.S. national security missions. These include low-enriched uranium (LEU), highly-enriched uranium (HEU), depleted uranium, a by-product of the uranium enrichment process which is also known as tails, and natural uranium. In recent years, the DOE has transferred some of this inventory in exchange for services ... for the clean-up of the former Portsmouth gaseous diffusion uranium enrichment plant, and for the downblending of HEU to LEU. DOE currently transfers about 2100 tU per year for these two programs. In 2015, then U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz issued a determination that transfers of up to 2,500 tU in 2015, and 2,100 tU in subsequent years, would not have an adverse material impact on the domestic uranium mining, conversion, or enrichment industry. The DOE is now in the process of considering a new determination covering the potential continued transfer of uranium for clean-up services at Portsmouth. The department last July issued a Request for Information (RFI), soliciting information about uranium markets and the domestic conversion and enrichment industries, and the potential effects of DOE transfers on them. It also commissioned an independent analysis of the potential effects of various levels of uranium transfers from Energy Resources International (ERI), published in January.