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The kidnapping of America's molten salt reactor program, Part #2 - a chief suspect emerges.
URENCO's Eunice, NM enrichment facility
The company that operates this uranium enrichment center, Urenco, is the world leader in the field. It is also plumply profitable. So why are its owners eager to sell it?
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Urenco was formed by treaty in 1971 when Britain, West Germany and the Netherlands decided for strategic and business reasons to combine their uranium enrichment programs. The company is still owned by the British and Dutch governments, with one-third each, and with the German third held jointly by two big utility companies, E.On and RWE.
Urenco now has four enrichment plants — in Britain, the Netherlands and Germany — selling fuel for civilian energy purposes around the world, capturing nearly a third of the global market. It is also heavily investing in an American centrifuge complex in Eunice, N.M., that will eventually be its largest plant.
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Urenco was formed by treaty in 1971 when Britain, West Germany and the Netherlands decided for strategic and business reasons to combine their uranium enrichment programs. The company is still owned by the British and Dutch governments, with one-third each, and with the German third held jointly by two big utility companies, E.On and RWE.
Urenco now has four enrichment plants — in Britain, the Netherlands and Germany — selling fuel for civilian energy purposes around the world, capturing nearly a third of the global market. It is also heavily investing in an American centrifuge complex in Eunice, N.M., that will eventually be its largest plant.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/05/27/powerhouse-of-the-uranium-enrichment-industry-seeks-an-exit/
In a previous post I noted how New Mexico has several motives for wanting to discourage an alternative to uranium. But Urenco, with $1 billion in annual profits and 30% of the world's enrichment market, became the biggest incentive of all. Time Magazine reports on its New Mexico plant approval progress in 2004:
In the past few weeks U.S. regulators have begun processing an application to construct the $1.8 billion plant, which has strong backing from powerful state and federal officials, including Republican Pete Domenici, who is chairman of the Senate Energy Committee. URENCO , an Anglo-Dutch-German consortium, hopes to build in New Mexico as part of Louisiana Energy Services, or LES, an alliance that includes the big American firms Exelon, Duke and Entergy, as well as Cameco, a uranium mining company and Westinghouse, a nuclear fuel manufacturer. If it is built, the plant would produce fuel for nuclear power generation in the U.S. and abroad.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,596639,00.html#ixzz2Ub0YkXTh
Even fellow Republicans turned on Domenici when he tried to fast track approval for the plant:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., added a provision to the failed energy bill that would have accelerated licensing of a $1.2 billion uranium enrichment plant in his state — a project critics call corporate welfare and pork.
Moreover, Domenici's top committee aide, Alex Flint, spent two years as a paid lobbyist for two companies that would benefit from construction of the facility.
"This isn't just your ordinary pork project," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said during debate on the Senate floor. "It is almost in a class by itself."
Moreover, Domenici's top committee aide, Alex Flint, spent two years as a paid lobbyist for two companies that would benefit from construction of the facility.
"This isn't just your ordinary pork project," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said during debate on the Senate floor. "It is almost in a class by itself."
http://lubbockonline.com/stories/120603/nat_1206030068.shtml
Urenco was given their plant in New Mexico, and as "Louisiana Energy Services, L.P.", Exelon, Duke, and Entergy all got their piece of the uranium pie. With substantial fossil holdings as well, cheap clean energy was the last thing these companies (or the State of New Mexico) were interested in.
