The U.S. Department of Energy announced todayit is investing $88 million and becoming a formal partner in a uranium enrichment project in southern Ohio.

The deal makes the Energy Department responsible for disposing of depleted uranium at the Piketon plant. That frees up the plant’s parent company, USEC and other private-sector partners, to invest $22 million in other parts of the project.

Both of Ohio’s senators, Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican Rob Portman, had lobbied hard for the plant, which expects to employ a thousand people in Ohio’s Appalachian region. Brown called it an important partnership.