WASHINGTON, Aug 15: The United States is planning to sell its once highly secretive uranium enrichment plants and some of the most sensitive technology to produce a much cheaper way of making enriched uranium that is in the prototype stage.

The plants to be sold are those near Paducah, Kentucky, and near Portsmouth, Ohio. The Wall Street Journal calls the businesses to be sold as ``one of the most complex, expensive and secretive'' since the civil war.

The deal to sell the US Enrichment Corp (USEC) will eclipse the 1.6 billion dollar sale of Conrail in 1967. USEC, the journal said, with 5,000 employees now, used to make both nuclear plant fuel as well as nuclear weapon fuel. Now its business will be to make fuel for power. It is the world's leading producer of nuclear power plant fuel.

Whoever buys USEC will also take over an $ 8 billion deal with the Russians to convert part of their surplus weapons grade uranium from nuclear warheads into US power fuel plant.

However, ``prospective buyers,'' said the journal, ``also worry about inheriting environmental problems''. The US had been hoping that General Electric (GE) or Westinghouse would offer to buy the plants but the GE says that it has ``absolutely no interest'' while Westinghouse says the company is ``following it closely''.

One of the most avid potential buyers, said the journal, is the Plelades Group, a New York company with close ties to Viktor Mihailov, the head of Russia's ministry of atomic energy.

USEC had a net income of $ 304 million last year on revenues of $ 1.4 billion. Analysts believe that profits will continue at that level for at least five years because USEC has lucrative nuclear fuel supply conracts with Japanese electric utilities and contracts for rock-bottom electricity prices with US utilities.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.