The parties to the settlement are USEC and its subsidiary, United States Enrichment Corporation, and Eurodif S.A. and its affiliates, Areva NC and Areva NC Inc.

This is expected to bring to an end all pending litigation and administrative proceedings regarding DOC’s 2002 antidumping duty order, which now is expected to remain in place until at least the next five-year sunset review in 2012.

“It is now time to put seven years of litigation behind us and move forward,” said Peter Saba, senior vice president, general counsel and secretary of USEC. “Today’s action eliminates any further resource drain this case may have on both companies and is a positive step for both companies, their workers, their customers and their shareholders.”

Under the terms of the settlement, USEC is expected to realize around $70 million (before taxes) from estimated duties deposited by Eurodif S.A.. The funds are expected to be received no earlier than the fourth quarter of this year from a US government program implementing federal legislation, commonly known as the Byrd Amendment. The Byrd Amendment was repealed effective October 2007, but permits domestic producers affected by the dumping of foreign merchandise to seek recoveries from antidumping duties collected on covered imports through September 2007.

The settlement also provides for a purchase of separative work units (SWU) by Eurodif in 2009 and 2010 from USEC. The purchase will help strengthen USEC’s backlog of sales, which is supplied from its production in Paducah, Ky., and its purchases of LEU downblended from Russian nuclear weapons material under the Megatons to Megawatts program.

“The terms of this settlement allow USEC to secure additional funds for our on-going operations and for our investment in the American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio, as well as sales that will benefit our existing enrichment plant in Paducah, Kentucky,” said Saba.

USEC’s original objective in asking US government to conduct an antidumping investigation was to protect the US uranium enrichment industry, its workers and the communities in which they live from unfairly priced imports. “Today’s settlement resolves this complex litigation and gives USEC and the U.S. market greater certainty about the future of the antidumping measures taken by the U.S. government in this case. We appreciate the strong support we received from the federal agencies, Congress and the United Steelworkers union throughout this case,” said Saba.

The settlement is estimated to bring an end to litigation that began almost immediately after the imposition of the antidumping duty order in 2002. Until recently, the litigation was dominated by the question of whether French LEU sold under SWU contracts should be treated as sales of services outside the scope of the U.S. antidumping law. In January of 2009, the US Supreme Court sided with the US government and USEC, ruling that DOC had reasonably concluded that such sales were sales of merchandise covered under the antidumping law.

Even with final resolution of that question by the Supreme Court, a number of other issues remained subject to appeals that were expected to continue for at least several more years. A ruling unfavorable to USEC on some of the outstanding issues could have led to termination of the antidumping order. Additional appeals had also been brought to challenge several reviews of French imports conducted by DOC since the order was first imposed, and further reviews were expected to result in many more appeals. Taken together, USEC anticipated at least three to five more years of significant litigation and uncertainty regarding the application of the antidumping order to imports of French LEU.