Exelon chairman Corbin McNeill and Duke executive vice president Michael Tuckman have written to president George W Bush for help in their application to the NRC for a licence to build a new uranium enrichment plant. Duke, Exelon and a number of other US utilities and businesses have been discussing construction of an enrichment plant that would use gas centrifuge technology, with European enricher Urenco. Duke and Urenco abandoned an attempt in 1998 to build a centrifuge enrichment plant in Louisiana after the NRC licensing proceedings dragged on for years.
McNeill and Tuckman said that USEC, which operates the country's sole enrichment facility in Kentucky, is crippled by debt and only able to operate while subsidised by its trade in blended-down high-enriched uranium (HEU) under the US-Russian Megatons to Megawatts programme.
