In an effort to change the subject, USEC has tried to pitch its project as a jobs generator. But, at most, its centrifuge effort is worth 400 permanent salaried positions. USEC knows this. Hedging its case yet again, USEC has now fallen back on national security arguments. They, however, are desperate stuff.

Under current treaty agreements that the United States has with Europe and Australia, USEC insists Washington cannot use any of the uranium generated from foreign-designed enrichment plants—even those that might be operating here in the United States—to make nuclear weapons materials, such as tritium, a material used to boost the yields of our nuclear weapons. The U.S. now makes all of its nuclear weapons tritium in a light water power reactor (LWR) located at Watts Bar, Tennessee, which is fueled with low-enriched uranium.

Without a U.S.-designed enrichment plant supplying Watts Bar with fresh uranium fuel, USEC and its supporters contend that U.S. nuclear weapons will run out of the legal supply of tritium they need to function properly. Hence, USEC argues, Congress is justified in keeping USEC and its centrifuge project alive by encouraging DOE to reprogram monies for USEC and to grant it a 2 billion loan guarantee.

This seems to be a tight enough argument. There’s only one problem: Virtually none of it is true. We know this because recently, DOE released a copy of an internal review it did of USEC’s first loan guarantee application. In it, each and every one of USEC’s national security arguments is shot down.

If it really was true that the U.S. government could only use enriched uranium from entirely indigenously designed and equipped enrichment plants, the American Centrifuge Project, according to DOE, would itself not qualify: As the Department’s own analysis makes clear, USEC’s centrifuge system employs a good number of foreign components. USEC could fix this by substituting U.S. made parts for these components but this, DOE notes, would be pointless.

Why? Because the legal premises of USEC’s national security argument are rebuttable. When it comes to making tritium, DOE notes “It’s not clear that there is a legal issue.” The agreements with Australia and Europe do prohibit using the uranium that is made with their enrichment technologies in bombs. Tritium, however, is another matter. It’s a “byproduct” generated by “neutron activity in the reactor” rather than in any enrichment plant. As such, DOE analysts argue that it’s “not clear than foreign legal restrictions apply.”