Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantees are and should be under the magnifying glass. On August 31, 2011, the first company to receive a loan guarantee, Solyndra, a solar manufacturing project, went bankrupt after spending half a billion taxpayer dollars. This should be enough to put the brakes on the entire program before taxpayers lose more.

But the loan guarantee program keeps threatening to add on more bad liability for taxpayers. USEC, an enrichment plant under construction in Piketon, OH seeking a federal loan guarantee, was effectively rejected by the DOE once in 2009. An independent engineering review at the time said the technology was “not commercially viable today,” and the DOE offered the company $45 million in research funding as a political olive branch and told them to resubmit their application in 12 to 18 months.

Fast forward to the beginning of October. USEC told the DOE that it needed to approve their loan guarantee by the end of October or else. This isn’t the first game of chicken that USEC has played with the DOE, issuing a similar threat for a June 30th date that came and went without incident. Politicians of all stripes lined up to support the financially dubious project, while criticizing the handling of the Solyndra loan with the other side of their mouth.

Now the DOE has offered another political olive branch, this time likely offering up to $300 million to treat USEC as a Research, Development, and Demonstration program funded almost entirely by the government. According to USEC’s press release, the money would help “to reduce the technology and financial risk of commercialization of the American Centrifuge technology,” likely the same financial risk that existed two years ago which forced the DOE back then to effectively deny their loan guarantee application.

The taxpayer money would help manufacture and operate additional machines “so that key systems can be tested as they would actually operate at the scale necessary for full commercialization.” More clearly, it means that DOE is offering to spend millions of taxpayer dollars, on top of the research money they’ve already given to USEC, to help a private company do more research on their technology which has had years to be improved and refined. How long will DOE help USEC with taxpayer funds before they call it quit, especially since there’s a privately funded uranium enrichment company already in New Mexico? And they are doing all this so that presumably one day USEC can get a loan guarantee to put up to $2 billion of taxpayer money on the line.

The funding still needs to get approved by Congress, but they’re track record on this isn’t any better than the DOE. Getting millions more from taxpayers is great deal for USEC, but it is not a good use of limited taxpayer dollars. With years of trillion dollar deficits and a nearly $15 trillion debt, DOE should cut USEC loose and stop wasting money.