The Uranium One “scandal” has its genesis in the end of the Cold War. With the end of the Cold War, the Soviets had tons of highly enriched uranium, most in the form of warhead, bombs and submarine reactors. A big fear of the western world was this inventory turning up in the hands of bad actors around the world.
The US solution was to buy it all. It got dollars into the hands of a fledgling Russian government and got the stockpiles off of the world market. The US problem was what to do with it. With the end of the Cold War, we needed much less of it and had surplus warheads and bombs.
We sold our two government run reclamation facilities for $3 billion. We sweetened the deal by giving them the exclusive rights to the Russian products. The business worked out well. Then the Russian-US deal went south. Negotiations went nowhere, and President Obama terminated the program by executive order.
The company had big plans for commercial use of nuclear energy. They applied for a loan guarantee to build a new plant and were turned down. Meanwhile, the Obama administration approved a loan guaranty for a plant owned by the French government to be built in Idaho. A Dutch/UK/Germany company built a plant in Louisiana. Obam’s folks cited safety flaws which years later were dismissed by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Both links tell more about the story, with the second link being published in 2009 which gives more background.
Maybe this isn’t only about the Russians and Hillary. There is a lot more to be seen. Read more here and here..