Why The Clinton Uranium "Scandal" is Complete Nonsense

Answer courtesy of Dave Haynie, Electronics systems engineer analyzing politics as just another complex system.

Oh, boy howdy, that’s a difficult one, but I’ll start with this:

The whole idea that there’s any kind of scandal is ludicrous if you actually understand the big picture, and just how silly it would be for the Russians to even want to take uranium from the USA. Details matters, so I didn’t leave many out, and yes, I used big words, but I think even more Republicans will understand this.

• The deal to which you refer was the purchase of Uranium One, Canadian company, by Tenex (formerly JSC Atomredmetzoloto), a Russian company, a division of Rosatom, the Russian nuclear agency. During the Bush Administration, Tenex formed a subsidary in Maryland, called Tenam USA.
• The Canadian version of Uranium One did not hold 20% of US uranium. The Russian version of Uranium One does not currently hold 20% of US uranium. Uranium One has two licensed mining operations in Wyoming that amount to about “20 percent of the currently licensed uranium in-situ recovery production capacity in the U.S.,” according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
• In other words, this is production capacity. In theory, if provided with enough ore, the Uranium One plants could produce up to about 20% of the uranium used in the USA. In point of fact, this capacity had stood unused for ten years prior to the acquisition.
• However, the mines themselves owned by Uranium One are terrible. They’re nearly depleted, the ore extracted from them is of such low quality, it’s not cost-competitive with other sources of uranium. Basically, the Canadians couldn’t have given away these mines.
• The uranium they can process is low grade only, for nuclear reactors, not nuclear weapons.
• Any uranium processed by Uranium One in Wyoming is sold to domestic power plants. One reason there are no uranium export licenses offered is the same reason that, until Trump, there were no petroleum export licenses: we use domestic energy at home. All US-sourced uranium sold to power plants in the USA in 2016 amounted to only 11% of the total purchased. The rest came from elsewhere.
• Most of that elsewhere was …. Russia! Rosatom/Tenex was already the primary supplier of uranium to US power plants. This begain in 1993 with the “Megatons to Megawatts” deal with Russia, which allowed sales into the US of uranium pulled and processed from old Soviet nuclear weapons. By 2009, Russia supplied more than half of all the uranium used in the United States.
• Rosatom didn’t particularly care about the US operation. They acquired Uranium One to gain control of some very profitable uranium mines in Kazakhstan. That operation is the largest producer of commerically sold uranium on the planet.
• The deal had to be approved by CFIUS (The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States). There are nine members on the CIFUS board: representatives of the secretaries of the treasury, state, defense, homeland security, commerce and energy; the attorney general (including the FBI); and representatives from two White House offices: the United States Trade Representative and the Office of Science and Technology Policy.
• It turns out there was an investigation within the FBI of Tenam for racketeering. Tenam was the organization setting up sales contracts between Tenex/Rosatom and US power providers. The FBI suspected that Tenam, as intermediary, was padding prices on the Tenex deals and thus, given the huge percentage of uranium bought from Russia, jacking up the price of all US uranium.
• However, they apparently didn’t bother to send an intra-office memo about that to the other FBI personnel working on the CFIUS committee at the FBI…. apparently they didn’t consider it important enough for those on the committee to consider. When Republicans today speak of “new FBI reports”, they’re talking about this investigation, which was entirely unrelated to the Uranium One sale.
• The completed Uranium One deal led to Tenex being granted a license to sell uranium from Kazakhstan to US power plants. This was the first deal of its kind, allowing new Russian uranium as well as reclaimed uranium into the USA for our reactors. So yes, brothers and sisters, uranium was flowing into the USA from Russia, and the Uranium One deal only gave Russia a larger hose.
• CFIUS can’t actually block a sale. They are only empowered to approve a sale. If any single member of the CFIUS board does not approve of a sale, that member can make a recommendation to the President to block the sale. The President can then decide to block the sale, if he agrees.
• Aside from CFIUS, other government agencies had to approve this transfer of ownership. That includes the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
• Hillary Clinton did not personally sit on the CFIUS board at any time. Clinton was the most anti-Putin person in the Obama Administration. If there was any reason for Clinton to be involved, it would have been to block the deal, not approve it.
• If CFIUS met to approve this sale today, they would approve it. After all, the current Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, is a personal friend of Putin’s and a holder of the Russian Order of Friendship, the highest honor Russia can bestow on a foreigner. Trump is friendly with Russia. There is absolutely nothing about this deal that was sketchy, but it would absolutely have been approved today, just as it was in 2010, without any controversy or concern.
• In a heartbeat, if they wanted to, the Congress could pass a law barring Russian ownership of US uranium mines, any old US mine, US ghost towns, US vodka distilleries, or anything else they felt was important. Take a look at who’s running Congress and who’s President. If Republicans really thought there was a scandal here, Uranium One would have been shut down months ago. Of course, that could have Russia retaliate by refusing to keep the uranium flowing into the USA.

The Republicans are just trying to create a fake scandal out of a nothingburger here to distract from the many real scandals surrounding Trump.

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