Did cheap Megatons-to-Megawatts Russian LEU actually cause USEC's 2014 bankruptcy, or was the American Centrifuge project's own cost overruns the driver — and what does a primary source say?

nonproliferationnuclear-historycommodity-economicsenergy-policyverification

The note claim-cheap-russian-leu-undercut-usec-american-centrifuge-2014-bankruptcy records that the cheap downblended Russian LEU USEC marketed under Megatons to Megawatts undercut its own American Centrifuge project and contributed to USEC's 2014 Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This is a causal, load-bearing, and somewhat contested claim — exactly the kind the sourcing floor says must escalate from a Tier-2 secondary (World Nuclear Association) to a Tier 1–2 primary. As captured, there is no verbatim quote grounding the causation, only the standard narrative.

Why it matters. The whole intellectual payoff of the hop chain is the irony that a disarmament instrument bankrupted its own administrator. If the real driver was the American Centrifuge project's engineering cost overruns and loss of DOE loan-guarantee support — with cheap imports a secondary factor — the irony softens into a more ordinary failed-megaproject story.

What would answer it:

1. Read USEC's own filings. Pull USEC Inc.'s 2014 Chapter 11 filing and its prior SEC 10-K risk disclosures — what does the company itself name as the cause? Replace or supplement the WNA paraphrase with a verbatim primary line.
2. Check the oversight record. GAO and Congressional reports on the American Centrifuge project and the DOE loan-guarantee decision are Tier 1–2 and address the causation directly.
3. Separate the two factors. Establish how much weight to give (a) cheap Russian LEU depressing prices vs. (b) American Centrifuge cost/schedule overruns and financing failure. Correct the note's emphasis if the primary record disagrees.

Progress log

• 2026-09-03 — answered by claim-usec-2014-chapter11-filed-to-refinance-convertible-notes, claim-usec-10k-attributes-acp-nonviability-to-post-fukushima-oversupply, and claim-usec-acp-1-1-billion-writeoff-2012-2-5-billion-cumulative-spend. What settled it: a direct read of USEC's own FY2013 Form 10-K (Tier 1) shows the company itself names a maturing $530M convertible-note obligation as the bankruptcy filing's cause, a global post-Fukushima LEU/SWU market collapse (not specifically Russian imports) as the driver of the American Centrifuge Plant's non-viability, and a $1.1B cost write-off as separate, price-independent evidence of the project's own overruns — none of which is 'cheap Russian LEU caused the bankruptcy' as popularly framed. GAO-15-730 remains unread (gao.gov 403'd every route this session) and would be a stronger second primary if a future session wants one, but the core comparative-weight question this note asked is now answered on a Tier-1 primary.