nuclear-news

China quietly investing in USA enriched uranium company USEC

Fuel Maker for Reactors Has China as Investor  – NYTimes.com, Matthew Wald, June 2010, A Hong Kong company that is partly owned by the Chinese government has quietly purchased a 5.1 percent stake in the only American-owned provider of enriched uranium for use in civilian nuclear reactors, The New York Times’s Keith Bradsher reports.The company that bought the stake, the Noble Group, is the world’s second-largest commodities trading and logistics company after Cargill and is based in Hong Kong. One of its minority owners is the Chinese government’s sovereign wealth fund.The American company is USEC, which is based in Bethesda, Md., and enriches uranium so that fission can occur in nuclear reactors. It currently supplies enriched uranium for use in the United States, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
Noble said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it had purchased the shares on the open market from May 25 to June 2.

Noble wants to become USEC’s partner in marketing uranium enrichment for reactors in Asia, particularly mainland China, according to Richard Elman, Noble’s founder and executive chairman. ……..
Even a passive Chinese government stake in USEC could draw attention in Washington for its strategic and diplomatic implications. USEC, the parent of the United States Enrichment Corporation, is a cornerstone of America’s nuclear establishment, with classified operations that date back to the initial development of the atomic bomb during the Manhattan Project in World War II………..
With $2 billion a year in sales, USEC holds about 30 percent of the worldwide uranium enrichment market for commercial reactors.

And it has been at the center of an Energy Department-administered program to take highly enriched uranium from former Soviet military stockpiles and dilute it for USEC to sell as fuel in civilian nuclear reactors, the so-called megatons-to-megawatts program. It may now do the same for the United States military after President Obama and President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia signed an agreement in April calling for deep cuts in nuclear weapons……………..The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, an interagency panel coordinated by Treasury, has the authority to examine foreign purchases of stakes in American companies and block deals that threaten national security. A Treasury spokeswoman declined to comment on whether the committee was aware of the Noble transaction or would examine it, citing a secrecy provision in the committee’s rules.

Fuel Maker for Reactors Has China as Investor – DealBook Blog – NYTimes.com

July 14, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, USA | antinuclear, enriched, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear secrecy, nuclear technology, reactors, uranium