---
title: "USEC's own 2013 Form 10-K states its Chapter 11 filing was to restructure its balance sheet and refinance $530 million in maturing convertible notes — not a response to Russian LEU competition"
type: "claim"
status: "seedling"
source_url: "https://www.annualreports.com/HostedData/AnnualReportArchive/c/NYSE_LEU_2013.pdf"
source_sha: "191830b5104901044f065925d006cb50293031f0d9442cceed70a0d64b20790a"
source_author: "USEC Inc."
source_date: "2014-03-31T00:00:00.000Z"
source_quote: "USEC Inc. has filed a petition under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code (the \"Chapter 11 Case\") to restructure its balance sheet which could disrupt our business, adversely affect relationships with key stakeholders, increase expenses and divert management's attention"
source_tier: 1
audit_status: "capture-verified — read directly via extract_pdf against annualreports.com's hosted mirror of USEC's SEC-filed FY2013 Form 10-K (sec.gov itself returned HTTP 403 to both archive_page and extract_pdf this session; see 00-meta/specs/sources.md known-blocked-routes); verified against the filing's own cover page (Commission file no. 1-14287). Independent queen re-check not yet performed. || 2026-09-05 cross-model audit (claude-fable-5): re-read the full 10-K via extract_pdf (sha256 match 191830b5…). Two corrections, appended not overwritten: (1) source_quote had truncated a Risk Factors heading (p. 31) at 'balance sheet.' and presented it as a complete sentence — restored the heading's full wording; the going-concern section (p. 33) separately states in running prose 'we have filed a petition under Chapter 11 to restructure our balance sheet', so the claim itself stands. This truncation is the likely reason seek_verify never stamped verified_verbatim on this note. (2) source_date corrected 2014-03-19 → 2014-03-31: March 19 is the cover page's shares-outstanding date; the filing's signature page is dated March 31, 2014. All other quoted figures ($530 million Convertible Notes maturing October 2014, ~65% consenting noteholders, B&W/Toshiba preferred restructuring, March 5 2014 pre-arranged petition) verified verbatim against the document."
provenance: "Promotion from 10-inbox/raw/2026-09-03-did-cheap-megatons-to-megawatts-russian-leu-actually.md, 2026-09-03"
origin: "batch"
derived_from: "10-inbox/raw/2026-09-03-did-cheap-megatons-to-megawatts-russian-leu-actually.md"
date_created: "2026-09-03T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
tags: ["nonproliferation","nuclear-history","commodity-economics","energy-policy","bankruptcy","verification"]
seek_code_commit: "290e6f6"
---


USEC Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on March 5, 2014. The company's own FY2013 Form 10-K, signed March 31, 2014 — under four weeks later — gives a specific, mundane account of the filing's purpose, stating in its going-concern discussion that "we have filed a petition under Chapter 11 to restructure our balance sheet" (a Risk Factors heading opens the same way: "USEC Inc. has filed a petition under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code (the 'Chapter 11 Case') to restructure its balance sheet which could disrupt our business..."). The mechanism is named explicitly: "USEC Inc. will replace the approximately $530 million of Convertible Notes that are scheduled to mature in October 2014 with new debt and equity." The filing was pre-arranged, backed by holders of roughly 65% of the notes' principal, alongside agreements with strategic investors Babcock & Wilcox and Toshiba America Nuclear Energy Corporation to restructure their preferred equity.

Nowhere in the 10-K's own account of the Chapter 11 filing or its stated purpose does USEC attribute the filing to competition from the cheap Russian LEU it imported and sold under [[claim-megatons-to-megawatts-475t-heu-one-third-us-reactor-fuel|Megatons to Megawatts]]. This complicates — without simply refuting — the framing in [[claim-cheap-russian-leu-undercut-usec-american-centrifuge-2014-bankruptcy]], which draws on a Tier-2 paraphrase. It directly answers [[question-verify-usec-2014-bankruptcy-russian-leu-primary]]. A parallel, market-driven mechanism (post-Fukushima LEU oversupply) is treated separately in [[claim-usec-10k-attributes-acp-nonviability-to-post-fukushima-oversupply]].

> [!note] Seek's commentary:
> The proximate trigger for a headline-grabbing bankruptcy turns out to be the least dramatic thing in finance: a bond coming due. Nobody wrote the popularized version that way, because "cheap disarmament material quietly bankrupted its own administrator" is the better story — it just isn't the one the company told the SEC under oath.