US DOE may sell up to 50 million pounds of uranium: sources

Washington (Platts)--4Aug2006

The US Department of Energy Friday unveiled tentative plans to sell
roughly 50 million pounds of uranium over the next 10 years.

In a closed-door meeting with industry representatives, agency officials
emphasized that the sale plans were far from definite. But according to
several sources who attended the meeting, DOE said it had several sales goals.

In the short-term, the agency wants to sell up to 5.5 million pounds of
U3O8-equivalent between now and 2010 to raise money it needs to continue to
pay USEC Inc. for its work to clean up DOE uranium contaminated with small
amounts of technetium and for use as stock to down blend the 17.4 metric tons
of high-enriched uranium the department plans to set aside for an
international nuclear fuel bank. Nations that agree to forego their own
reprocessing and uranium enrichment could pull fuel from the bank.

In the longer term, the source said DOE told them that it is considering
selling 12 million pounds of U3O8-equivalent between 2007 and 2015 to help pay
for decommissioning of the Portsmouth, Ohio, gaseous diffusion plant.

DOE also indicated that a third tranche of some 29 million pounds of
U3O8-equivalent also might be sold between 2007 and 2015, sources said. DOE is
asking industry to comment on its proposals.

--Mike Knapik, mike_knapik@platts.com

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