Idaho's Risch Backs Deal To Help Enrichment Plant

JOHN MILLER

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — U.S. Sen. Jim Risch would back doubling federal loan guarantees for U.S. uranium enrichment projects to $4 billion and awarding half to a proposed new Ohio plant, if that's what it takes to help a competing proposal in Idaho that the first-term Republican fears could fall victim to politics.

Risch told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday the political clout of lawmakers in Ohio, an important battleground state in presidential politics, could wind up hurting efforts by French-owned Areva Inc. to secure the $2 billion the Department of Energy currently has set aside for loan guarantees to uranium enrichment projects.

USEC Inc. was told by the DOE in late July it wouldn't get the guarantees because its partially built plant near Cincinnati wasn't ready to go forward. Just a week later, however, the agency offered the Bethesda, Md.-based-company another six months before doing a final review of the loan application.

As a member of the GOP minority, former Idaho governor Risch has found himself in the role of stopper on Democrat-backed issues including expansion of union power, pollution-credit trading and President Obama's push to reform the U.S. health care system. But divvying up loan guarantees, especially if it favors a project in his backyard, is an area where the first-term senator said he's willing to make a deal.