The federal government denied a 2 billion dollar loan guarantee for a new uranium enrichment plant, so construction has been stopped and thousands of potential jobs have evaporated.
At the same time, though, federal energy officials vowed to create up to a thousand new jobs by expanding efforts to clean-up radioactive contamination caused by an EARLIER weapons plant there during the Cold War era.
Governor Strickland's reaction?
STRICKLAND: It's bittersweet. The bitter part is that the guaranteed loan was not granted. The sweet part is that there are going to be significant resources made available that are going to create many hundreds of other jobs, but i wish we could have both loan guarantee and the additional money for cleaning up the site. That would have best.
Strickland was due to meet late yesterday with a top executive of USEC, --- the company that had planned to build the new uranium plant.