TO THE MEMBERS OF THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:
We express our strong support to maintain a critical economic and infrastructure need: a domestic source of low enriched uranium (LEU) for commercial nuclear power plants. As you may be aware the House Armed Services Committee recently included a provision in H.R. 4310, the “National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013” which would authorize a domestic uranium enrichment research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) project. While we support this effort to maintain a domestic source of enriched uranium, we urge the committee to ensure this is done in a competitive manner to support free market principles. In addition, we request the committee take into consideration the cumulative impact of all related government actions on the struggling private sector domestic mining and conversion industries, and ensure that any transfers of uranium from the federal government stockpile do not disrupt the market.
The deployment of advanced enrichment technology will help ensure there is a robust market to help supply the 104 nuclear reactors in the U.S. fleet, which provide nearly 20-percent of America’s electricity, with a domestic fuel source for decades to come. However, a viable domestic advanced enrichment technology must be accompanied by a similarly viable domestic uranium mining and conversion industry to provide it with feedstock uranium to enrich.
Thank you for your support for this essential program.
Sincerely,
National Association of Manufacturers
Nuclear Energy Institute
U.S. Chamber
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