"The troubled United States Enrichment Corp., on the brink of closing a Kentucky enrichment plant, has been bailed out in a complex Energy Department accord designed to keep that facility open one more year."

"But USEC, a Bethesda-based firm that provides fuel for nuclear power reactors, is seeking more federal money to carry out research and development for the American Centrifuge Project, a more efficient enrichment plant in Ohio that the company calls vital to its future.

USEC’s supporters in Congress have inserted language in versions of three different spending bills that would provide as much as $150 million -- an example of how a small piece of complicated legislation can acquire powerful political allies and foes.

Without new government aid, USEC says it will have to halt work at the Ohio site by month’s end, and that has created a rare moment of bipartisanship in Washington. Democratic and GOP members of the Ohio delegation,"

Steven Mufson reports for the Washington Post May 16, 2012. [2]