American Thinker
Joseph Somsel Oct 26, 2017
[excerpt]
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/10/do_private_uranium_investors_have_a_3b_claim_against_obama_administration_officials.htmlAs the Uranium One scandal unfolds and North Korea nukes up, Americans rightly worry about the integrity of our regulatory and approval mechanisms related to fissionable material. It appears that members of the Obama Administration may have used the extensive regulation and secrecy integral to US uranium operations to bankrupt a $3 billion private firm, and civil litigation, with very different and often more permissive rules of discovery and deposition, may be feasible as a mechanism of getting at the rot. Some questionable federal government actions reported here in American Thinker in 2009 could be the basis for a civil suit against former Obama Administration officials.
A good thing happened at the close of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union back in 1991. The Soviets had tons of highly enriched uranium (90%+ U-235) that the Russians had little use for with the end of Cold War. Some of it was in the form of nuclear warheads and bombs. The other extensive inventory was reactor fuel from scrapped nuclear submarines. A big worry for nuclear experts was how the weak and unstable Russian government was to maintain effective security on this near-ideal bomb making material. The first nuclear weapon used on Hiroshima used highly enriched uranium. This type is also considered the easiest to design and implement – the perfect terrorist weapon.
US lawmakers recognized the problem and came up with a solution. Buy the excess enriched uranium from the Russian government, “down-blend” it with normal uranium to low levels suitable for commercial reactor fuel (about 5% U-235) and use it to power American electricity supplies. The Russian government got some needed cash and the world had less to worry about from terrorist nuclear weapons. They called the program “Megatons to Megawatts.” For much of the 1990s and 2000s, somewhere between 10 and 20% of American electricity came from Russian warheads and submarine fuel.
