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.
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