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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums$115 million nuclear contract draws scrutiny on Perry; ties to Russia
WASHINGTON Energy Secretary Rick Perrys decision to award a $115 million no-bid contract to develop an advanced nuclear enrichment facility in Ohio is drawing scrutiny from Senate Republicans.
The Department of Energy said this month it would award the contract to Centrus Energy, a former government-owned contractor that ceased enrichment operations in 2013 before declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
In a letter to Perry this week, Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said the company had a mixed history in fulfilling federal contracts for nuclear fuel and questioned whether the money it received would end up supporting the Russian state-owned firm TENEX, from which Centrus buys enriched uranium.
This contract appears to use American taxpayer funding to bailout Centrus, an unsuccessful business that relies on commercial relationships with Russian state-owned corporations to stay in business, Barrasso wrote. Congress did not authorize or fund this project.
Read more: https://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/115-million-nuclear-contract-draws-scrutiny-on-13562022.php
watoos
(7,142 posts)into Hillary and Uranium One? With this distraction no one will notice that it is the GOP/Trump party that is in cahoots with Putin.
As poster Bernardo keeps saying, we need to keep linking the Republican party to Trump and also to Russia, because they are in fact linked.
rickyhall
(4,889 posts)Maggiemayhem
(809 posts)which related to the Ohio Valley Stoarage Hub made a cryptic remark about climate change and nuclear. We are going to surprise you he said. Is this what he was referring to?
Roadside Attraction
(238 posts)I've just finished reading Seth Abrahamson's new book, "Proof of Collusion." The book is VERY detailed and somewhat difficult to follow. Abrahamson has organized the book into time frames: Trump before he ran for president; January 2016-March 2016; etc., etc. Each chapter starts with a brief statement of what happened during that time frame, followed by excruciating details, followed by a summary of the main points.
To this point: In the later chapters of the book, Abrahamson details in several places the fact that the Saudis want nuclear weapons, however, we have enforced sanctions on their ability to obtain reactors. It's a long and twisted tale involving Russia, several MidEast countries, and the US, but, it boils down to the Saudis want nukes, we don't want them to have nukes -- that is, before Trump we didn't want them to have nukes -- and the Saudis are doing every sneaky deal they can find to try to get nukes, now aided by Jared Kushner.
I suspect this deal is part of the Saudi nuke plot that Abrahamson describes.
Ilsa
(61,691 posts)Kushner cares only about money, not what is in US interest. He's an amateur, and has no forethought of long term implications of his deal-making.
Roadside Attraction
(238 posts)Abrahamson's details of this matter are on pages 227 through 235 of his book.
According to Abrahamson (p. 235), if the US accedes to nuclear material and technology sales to Saudi Arabia:
The opportunity exists, should the United States assent to these sales, for all the parties to get what they want: the Trumps as much as a billion dollars; the Russians, an end to sanctions; the Saudis and the UAE, nuclear reactors; an easing of Russian support for Iran, and the right to enrich uranium without prohibitions on its subsequent weaponization; Qatar, an end to the Saudi blockade, the favor of the Trump administration, and a very large and likely to grow, should sanctions on Russia end private stake in Russias state-owned oil company.
gademocrat7
(10,651 posts)Laf.La.Dem.
(2,943 posts)crazytown
(7,277 posts)Amazing
UpInArms
(51,280 posts)Congress did not authorize or fund this project.
catbyte
(34,360 posts)Hermit-The-Prog
(33,309 posts)Achilleaze
(15,543 posts)frigging republicans and their evil empire* russian bedmates are a plague upon the planet.
* per ronald freaking reagan (R)
Bear Creek
(883 posts)This all started with Reagan/ Bush privatization of the gaseous diffusion plant. Timberlake was put in charge. It was named USEC.He was a friend of Bush. Also another little sister company was privatized by the same lawyers and investigators named Enron. Also at this time one of the higher ups at the company said that USEC was going to get out of the enrichment business and D&D would do nothing but broker power. Before this the plant made millions for the US Treasury.
Bill Clinton did nothing about it and sent Bill Richardson to the plant to say they was not going to shut it down which he did do. In the meantime the Paducah plant had been given several upgrades to try and make it a replacement for the Ports facility. It was not designed for and after all the upgrades still not able to enrich to he level needed for power plants. Bill Clinton was for the upgrades. Even mentioning them in a speech and let's not forget Gore was from TN.
Bill Clinton had the Megatons to Megawatts program. Where they brought over Russian material and blended it with our product to ship out. Which ended up at Paducah. Paducah being touted by Mich McConnell.
Then came the centrifuge plant, the first one was started up and shutdown almost the same day by Reagan.
Years later there was two of these plants being built one in New Mexico which succeeded and the other by USEC which did not. While USEC was there they managed to make everyone who wanted to invest in the plant mad, by the way the same people they needed to sell their product to.
So now they wanted the loan guarantees that Bush jr had come up with. I found it once it was in a proclamation letter that had nothing to do with energy company loans. The loans had to be approved by the Secretary of Energy and the cabinet post held by Rob Portman. For some reason not rubber stamped by him and he immediately left the post for personal reasons. Doesn't need congressional approval.
The same as Obama with Solyndra.
So Obama also did not approve the loan guarantee for USEC/ Centrus. I don't remember how many times USEC was in bankruptcy. The company was renamed Centrus after one of them.
Another little tidbit Gov. Strickland had gotten French company to Areva to build at the Ports site but USEC blocked that and the company built elsewhere.
The the one I was always wondering about was the cart and pony show with a stage and refreshments and Areva, Duke energy all the senators and reps from Ohio were there to announce building a power plant the Energy Secretary Chu was supposed to be there and did not show up. That afternoon Duke energy said it had no intention of building a plant in Ohio. But there was a mention around that same time that China was going to fund an 3 million dollar energy park.
About 2015 DOE started building a new plant in Oak Ridge TN.
There was 2 plants in Japan that was effected by the tsunami. They never mention the other one. It was built correctly with very conservative safety measures and did not have the problems of the other one that just barely had the minimum requirements.
WhiteTara
(29,699 posts)What does this mean?
TexasTowelie
(112,068 posts)Just kidding, that was a joke.
blogslut
(37,996 posts)Sorry, BUYING enriched uranium