Loan Request by Uranium-Enrichment Firm Upends Politics as Usual

[bananas]

Anti-science Republicans who complained about Solyndra are pushing for this nuclear boondoggle.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/25/business/loan-request-by-uranium-enrichment-concern-shakes-up-political-sides.html

Loan Request by Uranium-Enrichment Firm Upends Politics as Usual
By MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: November 24, 2011

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But the company, based in Bethesda, Md., points out that it provides nuclear fuel to one reactor for which foreign fuel or fuel from a foreign-owned company cannot substitute, because of rules against nuclear weapons proliferation.

That reactor, a civilian one owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority, is used by the Energy Department to make tritium, a perishable material for nuclear bombs. (Submarine and aircraft carrier reactors can use highly enriched uranium from old inventories, some of it left over from decommissioned weapons.)

<snip>

John R. Longenecker, a consultant in the nuclear fuel business, said the problem for USEC was that there were too many other players in the market in a world awash in enrichment capacity. The industry had hoped for a renaissance that would result in many more reactors, he said, but “if that happened, I blinked and missed it.”

And there are large inventories of highly enriched uranium from decades of past production, much of it from decommissioned weapons. “We’ve got 100 years of high-enriched uranium in storage,” Mr. Longenecker said. With additional material coming out of uranium weapons, there is enough “probably for 1,000 years of whatever naval fuel we need.”

So the only justification for this plant is to enable tritium production for nuclear weapons.
Here's a crazy idea: how about we stop making nuclear weapons?
Then we could spend the money on something useful.
http://disarmnowplowshares.wordpress.com
http://www.globalzero.org
http://www.nuclearrisk.org/