Provoking the ire of the nuclear power industry, the Department of Energy has proposed renewing a tax that expired in 2007 to help pay for the cleanup of DOE uranium enrichment sites.Earlier, the Obama administration had included reinstatement of the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund tax among the deficit reduction proposals it submitted to the so-called congressional “Supercommittee.” It reemerged in the proposed 2013 budget, under which nuclear utilities would pay $200 million (adjusted for inflation) annually into the fund over the next decade.The nuclear industry argues it has already paid its $2.6 billion obligation under a 1992 law passed to fund the cleanup of DOE enrichment facilities in Oak Ridge, Tenn., Paducah, Ky., and Portsmouth, Ohio, that sold enrichment services to utilities. Further, the Nuclear Energy Institute argued the government has not met its funding obligations for the fund, which has a balance of $4.6 billion.“The nuclear energy industry will continue to vigorously oppose this outrageous attempt to have our companies make up the government’s failure to fulfill its legal obligation to this long-standing environmental program,” said NEI’s chief lobbyist Alex Flint.