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USEC: Is the Enrichment Company Done?

By Kennedy Maize

USEC, the Bethesda, Md., uranium enrichment company that took over the Department of Energy’s enrichment program in 1992 is claiming that the Obama administration is reneging on promises to provide $2 billion in loan guarantees for the company’s “advanced” centrifuge enrichment plan, made during the 2008 presidential campaign.

DOE’s decision to withhold the loan guarantees authorized in the 2005 Energy Policy Act was based, the agency said, on a judgment that the centrifuge technology wasn’t not yet ready for the market. Without a new, lower-cost enrichment process, USEC likely will die, as it is tied to the high-cost, inefficient World War II gaseous diffusion cascades for enriching uranium developed during the Manhattan Project.

.USEC’s initial business strategy when it “bought” the DOE enrichment business (it was a fire sale), was that a new technology — “Advanced Vapor Isolation Laser Separation” or AVLIS — would transform the costs of uranium enrichment. When USEC inherited AVLIS, the company believed that the focused-laser technology would guide its way out of the old, costly, and inefficient World War II enrichment technology. By 1994, the belief in AVLIS had faded and USEC sold AVLIS to General Electric.

Then USEC turned to the advanced centrifuge technology that DOE had been developing at its site in Pikeston, Ohio. Europeans had been successfully developing gas centrifuges to enrich uranium — the centrifuges spin out the heavier U238 atoms from the lighter U 235 atoms in order to concentrate the heavier atoms more likely to spit apart and yield heat energy.

DOE was developing its own centrifuge technology, centered in Pikeston (for a number of reasons, most of them political). But, typical DOE thinking, the approach was big spinning machines. The Euros had concentrated, successfully, on many, many, many small centrifuges. DOE’s approach, which won funding in Congress, was fewer, bigger machines (bigger is better).

But there was a nasty technical problem. The bigger machines had bigger spinning masses. They tended to blow apart. The technical program went nowhere and Congress eventually killed the project. It’s another case of “live by the government, die by the government” that is a major theme in U.S. energy history. AVLIS didn’t work out and the prospects for big centrifuges looked very dicey.

USEC sold the AVLIS technology to General Electric, which is working on developing it. In the meantime, the enrichment company focused on the abandoned large centrifuge technology, and got an earmark in the 2005 energy bill for a $2 billion loan guarantee. President Obama campaigned in Ohio in 2008, pledging to support the centrifuge program.

DOE rejected the USEC loan guarantee application in late July, saying the application “would likely not meet the legal requirements of the 2005 EPACT statute” and the subsequent DOE regulations. The problem, DOE concluded, was that the USEC centrifuge technology wasn’t close enough to commercialization. It was, and had been for years, an R&D program, with no assurance of commercial viability.

USEC was outraged. CEO John Welch said the company was “shocked and disappointed” at the DOE decision. He cited some 235,000 hours of testing on the big centrifuges. But critics said the the USEC testing program was immature. The Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/28/AR2009072802617.html quoted Matt Rogers, a DOE official, that USEC had settled on a design for the centrifuges and tested only 38 of the 11,000 needed for the plant. “The project runs the risks of either major cost overruns or reliability problems, or both,” he said.

USEC http://www.usec.com/NewsRoom/NewsReleases/USECInc/2009/2009-07-29-USEC-To-Pursue-Discussions.htm said it is beginning the process of dismantling its centrifuge plant, and, as the same time, appealing DOE’s decision to deny loan guarantees.

The failure to get loan guarantees for the new technology could spell the end of USEC. The company’s common stock plunged dramatically at $2.15 per share to $4.05/ share after the DOE announcement, wiping out some $240 million in company market share.

The value of the company, some analysts noted, was in its future of uranium enrichment technology, not the past and current practices. Said one trader, “If USEC is stuck with the World War II cascades, the company is finished. Euro enrichment can flush USEC out of the market on the cost of [separative work units] as new fuel contracts come due.”

Bring on that Global Warming

By Kennedy Maize

Here’s a hoot. The recent global cooling we have seen would have been cooler without global warming.

That’s the claim of Dr. Brenda Ekwurzel of the Union of Concerned Scientists. In a letter to the Washington Post on July 27, Ekwurzel objected to a column by conservative George Will, who has taken up the cause of global warming skepticism. Will wrote, correctly, that the last decade has seen global cooling, not warming. Ekwurzel accepted that analysis, as she must, if she trusts the data.

But that’s only more proof of global warming, she argued. “Because of the natural ocean cycles, 1998 was a warm year,” she wrote in her letter to the editor. “Global warming made it even hotter. Conversely, 2008 was a cooler year, but global warming made it less cool.” Sounds Orwellian to me. Lies are truth. Peace is war.

Her statement, let it be known, is profoundly unscientific. There are no models, and no data, that support the notion that global warming made 1998 artificially warm and 2008 artificially cool. That’s high-degree hokum. The absence of data, she implies, proves her hypothesis. That’s nonsense.

Beyond that, the NASA satellite date make clear that there has been no global warming over the past 30 years. The global warming crowd – they now call it “climate change” so they can incorporate any weather information they want into their ideology – eschew hard data from satellites to maintain their view of the world.

Ekwurzel is a credible scientist who has a doctorate in geosciences and post-doc work at Columbia University and Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. But she now works for a lobbying group with a message. That renders her views at least subject to heightened scrutiny. I know what I’m talking about, as I worked for UCS in the mid-1980s, as an energy analyst focused on nuclear power plants in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster. I found it common that my views were subject to “politically correctness” reviews, and shortly left UCS.

As for the notion that cool means warm, and wet means dry, let me describe our experience on our small western Maryland farm this spring and summer. Ekwurzel cites anecdotal evidence, writing that “all corners of American are already experiencing the effect of climate change.

So as one of those corners, I’m allowed to comment. We’ve had the best growing period in the 20 years we have lived here. Days have been cool, and rain has been plentiful. Our pastures are lush. Out lambs went to market more than a month earlier than typical. Our tomatoes are really sweet and early. We’ve canned green beans and beets far earlier than usual, and in greater amounts. We’ve eaten and frozen English peas in profusion. Eggplants are delivering bountifully. Peppers are piling up. And so it goes.

Must be global warming.

New Yorker: Global Warming Strikes Hell

By Kennedy Maize

One of funniest pieces of political satire that I have read in many years is in the current issue of the New Yorker magazine. Written by Ian Frazier, the article’s title is “The Temperatures of Hell: A Colloquium.”

The premise is that temperatures in Hell have risen by 3.8 degrees since 1955 and that levels of boiling pitch for those in the lowest depths of the destination of the sinful had risen from knees to higher regions. Ouch! So, in December 2008, an international, interdisciplinary get together honchoed by former Vice President Al Gore, met in a “sulfurous subbasement of the Sony Building” in New York City to address the crisis.

Frazier describes the attendance policy: “To encourage the widest possible range of views, Mr. Gore invited a mixture of climate experts, satanic functionaries, representatives of industry, people from the faith community, average citizens, advocates for the aged, and a large number of the souls of the damned who are dealing with these changes on a daily basis.”

In his careful transcript of the meeting, Frazier quotes Mr. Gore asking the participants: “You know what it’s like down there, while many of us still don’t. First off, I think we’d all like to know: how hot is it?”

Among the witnesses is NASA’s climate scold Jim Hansen, who, according to the transcript, says: “Now, we are accustomed to thinking of the basic affliction of Hell as the burning brimstone—and, yes, brimstone is a significant part of the package, with its horrible odor and disgusting yellow color and the way it sticks to the skin and so on. But brimstone is essentially just sulfur, a rather expensive commodity when compared with, say, coal. And the fact is that owing to cost considerations low-grade soft coal—so-called ‘dirty coal’ —is currently providing more than ninety-three per cent of the energy for the fires of Hell.”

Opinions vary during the confab, which is interrupted by some Satanic episodes of furniture relocation and bad audio reception. But the decider in the debate is Satan him-or-herself. Whatever its gender, Satan steals the show. Beelzebub complains, “So when you look at your kids asleep in their beds after you return to your homes this evening, I want you to ask yourselves, ‘What kind of Hell am I leaving for them, and for my grandchildren?’ Once we’ve all thought about that, maybe we can set aside personal concerns and begin to act in the larger interest of Hell.”

What particularly tickled me by this satire was because ANALOG Science Fiction/Science Fact published a humorous satire I wrote in the Feb. 1978 edition (“Update: The Lord’s Prayer”). That piece of satirical fiction took on political correctness and the use of gender designations in language (“Our father” is clearly unacceptable). My short story had much the same form as Frazier’s take on hellacious warming, with a couple of diversions and sidetracks. In my piece, the meeting to work out a new Lord’s Prayer took place in Jersey City and the Mob got intimately involved.

Political satire has a great tradition. Read Jonathan Swift’s 1729 satire, “A Modest Proposal” on how to deal with famine in Ireland for a classic example.

These days, most good satire is on TV (and YouTube). The Daily Show and the Colbert Report, on the Comedy Channel, are good examples. The Fox News channel and its lineup of bloviating commentators is the often hilarious self-and-unaware satire station. Ditto Rush.

But it’s nice to read well-done, intended satire, as in the New Yorker article.

Bucket Truck Dreamin’

By Kennedy Maize

Since we first moved to rural America in 1972, I’ve wanted a bucket truck.

What a useful tool. Tree trimming, gutter cleaning, roof repairs, high-altitude carpentry, painting. The list of uses is probably endless.

But I’ve never actually plunked down the dollars necessary for a bucket truck, even a used model. Never searched E-bay for used equipment. Don’t want to increase my already big carbon footprint (a 1984 Ford F-250 V8, a 1996 Chevy Astro van, a 2004 Toyota Highlander, and a 1990 John Deere 23-HP diesel tractor). More to the point, I don’t want to spend the money. Bucket trucks, even used, aren’t cheap.

And now, my dream has been expanded: I’ve seen the electric bucket truck. Not long ago, I got a news release from Smith Electric Vehicles of Kansas City, Mo., (home of great barbeque) about the world’s first all-electric bucket truck. The vehicle rolled out at an industry conference in Williamsburg, Va., in late June (see photo).

PG&E is getting it. I want it.

There’s a (non-BBQ) delicious irony about a high-tech utility vehicle unveiled at America’s foremost theme park for low technology, but I’ll let that pass.

The news release said Pacific Gas & Electric will take the first test unit, which is not quite ready for commercial production. PG&E, maybe America’s most politically correct utility, will run the truck through its paces in its service territory. Good for PG&E.

According to the press release, the truck will have a top speed of 50 mph (that’s a lot more speed than I need around my farm), a range of more than 100 miles on a charge (again, more than I need), a telescoping boom with a height of 37.8 feet and a 28-foot reach. Now you’re talking.

I’m hereby formally volunteering to provide a second test bed for the truck – Sawmill Creek Farm. I’d be more than happy to fly to Kansas City (with a couple of days to luxuriate in Arthur Bryant’s BBQ) and drive the beast home, 100-miles at a time.

Climate bill faces uncertain future in Senate

By Kennedy Maize

The slim passage in late June of the House Democrats’ global warming bill – 219-212 – reminds old-timers of the Clinton administration’s passage of a Btu tax in 1993 by a 219-213 vote in the House, only to see it crater in the Senate.

Is the same result likely for the Obama administration’s global warming legislation? It may happen. Indeed, it’s likely to happen, as I scope it out.

The Senate is a far more conservative legislative body than the House, meaning that it is less likely to agree to bills that have won in the House, even with large margins. That’s what the Constitution had in mind. The Senate also proportionally represents more rural areas than the House members, and more coal interests.

The narrowness of the victory of the Waxman-Markey bill (HR 2454) in the House, despite a late-in-the day spending spree of concessions to reluctant farm-state and coal-state Democrats, suggests to me that it is dead legislation walking in the Senate.

The House bill is a dog’s dinner. It is legislative hash, with something for everyone. Billions are spread around to win crucial votes. For instance, Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), a Chicago pol, gets a billion-dollar inner city green job training program, with a rationale that defies comprehension. But it won Rush’s vote.

Farmers got all kinds of last-minute concessions that make no policy sense. But the bill would not have passed without rural Democratic votes. In the end, 44 Democrats voted against the bill, and eight Republican voted for it. Without farm-state votes, the bill would have failed.

The July 4 issue of The Economist described the bill as “a masterpiece of obfuscation” and “so weighed down with giveaways, loopholes and needless complexity that many environmentalists hesitate to support it.” The magazine also predicted a rocky course in the Senate.

It’s clear that the original Waxman-Markey bill (gosh, only about 900 pages), which emerged from the House Energy and Commerce Committee, would not have survived on the House floor, even with the large Democratic majority (275-178). According to multiple press accounts, House Commerce Committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) was horse-trading to line up votes on the floor as the House was voting on his committee bill. As a result, the bill grew from 900 pages to over 1,400 pages. I’d bet the ranch that nobody in the House – members or their staff (including Waxman and his aides) – had read it when it narrowly passed.

The New York Times’s John Broder, a veteran observer of how legislation in Washington works, wrote, “As the most ambitious energy and climate-change legislation ever introduced in Congress made its way to a floor vote last Friday, it grew fat with compromises, carve-outs, concessions and out-and-out gifts intended to win the votes of wavering lawmakers and the support of powerful industries.”

This is how legislative sausage is made in Washington. It’s not new. The Republicans, when they controlled the House, put the vote-timer on hold for hours (it’s supposed to be 15 minutes) while they lined up votes for a Bush-administration tax plan and beat the fields for special-interest and corporate support.

But the latest legislative peregrinations in the House, where the Democrats have a large majority, suggest problems for the Obama plan in the Senate, where the Democrats now have a nominal majority 60-vote majority (thanks to the final victory of Democrat Al Franken in Minnesota). The Democratic majority – allegedly filibuster-proof — is meaningless in the Senate, where energy and environmental issues are regional, not partisan. Franken, for example, a Paul Wellstone liberal, might bolt on a climate bill if it doesn’t favor Minnesota agriculture interests. Then there are the many Democratic senators who represent coal mining and coal burning states.

My prediction is a reprise of 1993. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee may report a bill later this year – it won’t come soon – that is vastly different than the House-passed legislation. Even given the enormous compromises in the House bill to coal (utility) and agricultural interests, that won’t mollify utility and ag interests in the Senate.

I’d bet (if I were a betting person) that the Senate won’t come up with a measure for floor passage this year. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada doesn’t much care about this energy stuff, as long as the nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain is dead (and it is). So Reid’s not going to push Obama’s energy legislation onto the agenda ahead of things he, and the White House, really care about, including health care, economic recovery, and financial regulation.

If the Obama administration were able to push its global warming agenda onto the Senate floor and get passage this year (remember, I said that’s unlikely), it probably will be very different than the House bill. That sets up a potentially long and nasty House-Senate conference committee to work out differences.

So my best guess is that the topic gets kicked into 2010, and becomes a mid-year election issue. If I were a Democrat running for House and Senate in 2010 (that would never happen), I’m not sure I’d want to be bumping up against an opponent who says my party wants to raise electric rates to combat a dubious problem. The climate hasn’t warmed in a decade.

Gridlock in Washington isn’t entirely a case of partisanship. It’s also a case of policy differences based on regional and local interests. What’s wrong with that? It looks like democracy to me.

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USEC: Is the Enrichment Company Done?

Bring on that Global Warming

New Yorker: Global Warming Strikes Hell

Bucket Truck Dreamin’

Climate bill faces uncertain future in Senate

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