Dr. Conca reports that Hillary Clinton is back in the news. But the reason is a big nothing burger. In a 2015 book, Breitbart News editor Peter Schweizer claimed that donations to the Clinton Foundation were behind the Obama administration’s approval of the 2010 sale of a Canadian mining company to a Russian state-controlled firm. The sale gave Russia control of a large swath of American uranium interests.
And by large, we really mean small. The allegations are back in the news after a report in The Hill last week claimed, citing anonymous sources, that at the time U.S. officials were weighing whether to approve the deal, the FBI was investigating evidence of bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering by Russian nuclear industry officials designed to help further Russian President Vladimir Putin's commercial nuclear ambitions inside the United States.
The Hill article was seized on by right-wing media ― and the President ― as evidence backing up a conspiracy theory that they've pushed amid the investigations into Russia's efforts to swing the presidential election to Donald Trump. The real collusion scandal, they claim, involves Russia and Hillary Clinton. The implication of the piece is that the FBI investigation should have been known to those who approved the deal in question.
Clinton's State Department and several government agencies on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States unanimously approved the 2010 partial sale of Canadian mining company Uranium One to the Russian nuclear giant Rosatom, supposedly giving Moscow control of more than 20% of America’s uranium supply.
Obama and Clinton colluding to hand over 20% America’s strategic uranium to the Russians? On cue, Fox News gabber Sean Hannity said this could be 'the biggest scandal' in American history. But here's the thing ― by 20%, we really mean almost zero.
Those U.S. facilities obtained by Russia produce almost nothing. The uranium deposits are of relatively poor grade and are too costly to compete on the uranium market. But the facilities do have good milling capacity to process ore, if anyone gives it to them, which hasn't happened in about 10 years. Theoretically, they could process 20% of our ore, but that will never happen. Uranium One couldn't give these facilities away. Besides, Russia can’t export any uranium they produce in the U.S. They do not possess a Nuclear Regulatory Commission export license.
The real reason Russia wanted this deal was to give Rosatom’s subsidiary Uranium One's very profitable uranium mines in Kazakhstan ― the single largest producer of commercial uranium in the world. Then, in 2011, the administration approved a Rosatom subsidiary to sell commercial uranium to U.S. nuclear power plants in partnership with the U.S. Enrichment Corporation. Up until then, Russia had been limited to selling our nuclear power plants uranium reprocessed from old Soviet nuclear weapons under the 1990s Megatons to Megawatts peace program. Nothing strange here, either. Finally, in 2013, Russia obtained 100% interest in Uranium One.
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