from: http://www.wbrief.com/mag/yhgtbj.htm Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.wbrief.com/mag/yhgtbj.htm">Washington Brief - Sec. of Energy Richardson - …</A> ----- Sec. Richardson - You Have Gotta be Joking! "One of my highest priorities at the Department of Energy will be to let the American people know the many ways in which we serve them and to determine how we can serve them better. I want the American people to know that the Department is their public servant and that we are working for them. - August 24, 1998." Smirking Secretary of Energy, Bill Richardson I do not fully understand the logic behind Bill Richardson, the current Secret ary of Energy, or lack thereof. I appreciate that he is the faithful retainer of President Bill Clinton, and therefore lacks vision, direction and the ability to do anything in the public interest. I appreciate he inherited the job from that flighty, jetsetting traveler, Hazel O'Leary, who was more concerned with her frequent flyer miles, than DOE, but it seems that daily DOE slips further in the murky waters of lies, deceit and anarchy. Consider the strange affair of Mr. Wen Lo Lee. One minute he is a Chinese Master Spy, next minute there is insufficient evidence against him. Yet he still rots in a jail, a pathetic example of ineffective, incompetent investigation and blunders. Now many of the secrets Mr. Wen Lo Lee is supposed to have given away, are to be paraded in open court. Mr. Richardson, who do you and work for? Are you sure it's the United States? Mr. Notra Trulock, wrote a letter to the Congress, which many people asked Was hington Brief to publish. You probably don't remember during your electioneering, and fundraising, but he was your former Chief of Counter Intelligence. Unless he was a Hilary appointee, and he does not look like a female, minority, or one with deviant sexuality, so that is doubtful, then he has risen through ability, and competence to that position. I would be very annoyed if my boss, politician or not, had treated me in the way he appears to have been treated. You should be thankful, for he probably prevented the FBI from storming Los Alamos, with CS Gas and tanks. Maybe you would like to reply to his points, $1000 a plate fundraisers allowing it. Let's move on from irritating matters, after all neither Wen Lo Lee, nor Notra Trulock will be willing to fork out $1000 a plate to put their case to your eminence. Lets took at things that go bang. Bloody BIG BANGS!!! Let's look at what the Center for Defense Information says: "Congress and the Administration appear willing to spend $60 billions on a limited national missile defense project that is probably technologically infeasible. But today, the Administration is in effect snatching defeat from the jaws of victory by failing to approve an agreement reached with the Russians that will ensure the continuing success of an existing program that is destroying thousands of Russian nuclear warhead explosives -- without spending a penny of taxpayer money. Negotiators for the U.S. and Russia reached agreement on future terms and were ready to sign the 13-year pact, only to be told at the last minute that the deal was put on hold by a lone dissent in the Administration. Some background is essential. At its peak the Soviet arsenal of nuclear warheads stood at over 30,000. In 1992, anticipating dismantlement of thousands of Russian warheads when START II would be mutually ratified, the US and Russian governments agreed to an unusual arrangement. Russia would extract the highly enriched uranium (HEU) explosives from their dismantled nuclear warheads and downgrade it to low enriched uranium (LEU). LEU is no longer useful as a weapon, although it is perfect for use as fuel for electric power generation. In 1993, Russia and the United States signed a government-to-government agreement that stipulated a commercial arrangement for the U.S. to purchase the Russian LEU derived from the HEU. In 1994, executive agents for the two governments signed a commercial implementing contract that provided a framework for purchasing LEU derived from 500 metric tons of Russian HEU taken from dismantled weapons. This is a twenty-year, $8 billion contract. For perspective on its importance, 500 metric tons of HEU will isolate roughly two-thirds of the fissile materials in Russia's nuclear inventory. The beauty of this commercial arrangement was that it wouldn't cost the taxpayer any money. No appropriations were necessary for this impressive national security program that would support itself by the sale of resulting LEU fuel to utilities. But this attractive solution to destroying Russian nuclear warheads had serious economic and political side effects and consequences. In 1992, while the Bush Administration was negotiating this deal, Congress was putting the finishing touches on the 1992 Energy Policy Act. This far-ranging energy legislation culminated 30 years of attempts by government to get out of the uranium enrichment business. The Act declared the goal of privatizing the government's uranium enrichment activities. It created the United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC) and transferred operation of the two DOE enrichment plants in Kentucky and Ohio to USEC. It stated that USEC was to run these operations like abusiness and to submit to the President and Congress a plan for privatization. USEC did so in 1995. After three years of Congressional hearings, additional legislation and due diligence by the Administration, the Federal Board of Directors and the Secretary of the Treasury sold USEC to investors in July 1998 for $1.9 billion in cash and kept an additional $1 billion in USEC funds. At the same time, President Clinton appointed a ten-agency Enrichment Oversight Committee (EOC) headed by the National Security Council and the State Department. Their job was to oversee USEC's implementation of the HEU purchase contract after privatization. As executive agent for the U.S. government, USEC was responsible for annual negotiations with its Russian counterpart on quantities and price. Both parties recognized that these annual negotiations were vexing. In 1996 the government approved USEC's signing a five-year agreement that fixed quantities and price. Solve one problem, create another. Since 1998, market prices for LEU have declined by nearly 20 percent. USEC wound up subsidizing the U.S. government, which refused to make up the $200 million difference between the purchase and the selling price. That money-losing formula expires at the end of 2001. USEC and the Russians have been negotiating the next tranche of this agreement for over eight months. The U.S. side is insisting on market-based pricing (less a small discount) beginning in 2002. The Russians recognize that is inevitable and put their demands on the table. They insisted that the U.S. agree to take an additional amount of non-weapons LEU to provide them with additional money on the front end of the deal to help the transition to market pricing. The U.S. EOC evaluated this proposal and authorized USEC to proceed with the final negotiations. In early May the parties were in Moscow ready to sign a 13-year market-based contract with the terms approved by the EOC. At the last minute the U.S. team was suddenly directed not to proceed. Apparently, domestic election politics took a front seat to this momentous national security achievement. According to published news reports, DOE, headed by Bill Richardson, put a hold on the signing because Richardson feared perceptions that the agreement would result in USEC laying off workers and finally closing one of its production plants. That's not a perception he wanted people to have as the election campaign swung into high gear. Frustrated negotiators on both sides left the unsigned agreement on the table and went home. Since then, USEC's board of directors concluded that given the global overcapacity of uranium enrichment, they could not afford to operate their two production plants at 25 percent capacity. On June 21, the board announced they would cease enrichment at the Portsmouth, Ohio plant a year later and consolidate operations at their Paducah, Kentucky facility. This decision was necessitated by market conditions, not, as Mr. Richardson's feared, that the new Russian agreement would trigger such an action. Nevertheless, his objection is still sustained and the negotiated terms for the 13 year agreement are in danger of expiring. Embarrassed by its position, DOE promptly cranked up its smokescreen machine. In June, news reports quoted the Secretary as saying that USEC had kept DOE in the dark about these negotiations. He raised several questions about USEC's motives and raised a host of items to obscure the real issue at hand -- that signing the agreement that will ensure the continued success of this vital program. The USEC CEO wrote to Mr. Richardson, documenting and naming names to prove that USEC had been in close consultation with DOE before and during these negotiations and refuting the Secretary's laundry list of reasons for delay. One wonders why the National Security Council and the State Department could not gracefully note the objections of the Energy Secretary and instruct the executive agent to sign this vital national security agreement. We are forced to conclude that, for reasons known only to them, they are afraid to do so. The cries and whispers of special interests continue to dog USEC at every turn. Labor unions at the two USEC plants are strong and oppose the announced plant closing. The domestic nuclear power utilities are seeking the lowest price for LEU and have argued that they, not USEC, should be able to purchase the Russian commercial LEU directly at the discount price. Domestic natural uranium miners and producers along with others in the fuel cycle claim that the Russian contract and USEC's privatization have hurt their business and they are looking for relief. The Congressman from the Ohio plant district has just introduced legislation to nationalize USEC. Is it possible that pressure from such groups is the real cause of DOE's actions? Despite these various perspectives, some simple facts must rule. First, national security considerations must remain paramount. The Administration should immediately instruct that the negotiated agreement be signed. This will guarantee that the remaining 13 years of this Russian nuclear conversion program covering the equivalent of 13,000 nuclear warheads will be on a safe and predictable footing, without cost to the taxpayer. Second, issues about jobs, plant closings and impact on industry have been with us every time a war ends, including the Cold War. Wrenching adjustments have been made in aerospace, defense, electronics, weapons, etc. Bases have been closed and inefficient factories shut; massive workforce adjustments have been necessary. None of this is new, nor is the nuclear industry entitled to special treatment in facing these changing business realities. The new agreement should be signed immediately. " Mr. Richardson, just who the hell are you working for? You treat your employees like doggy doodah, you treat your officials with contempt, and you have total disregard of the American public. Why, because their safety and survival may reflect badly in your fundraising, and political campaigning. Sir, you may consider resigning, and moving on to becoming a full time fundraiser. Then these irritating trivialities at Los Alamos, and Moscow will not be able to interfere with your chosen profession. Washington Brief thanks the Center for Defense Information, Charles Yulish, and Oscar Lurie for the material on Nuclear Warheads. This site carries original content from many contributors, and this content and those opinions are of the authors, and do not reflect the opinions of Communication Links, Inc. its contributors or advertisers. We have reproduced them here for public awareness and discussion. 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