Centrus plans to introduce uranium hexafluoride into its new high assay, low enriched uranium cascade in Ohio around May 22, according to a letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from the company.
The commission published the letter online Tuesday. The missive was dated March 23 and was signed by Mathew Snider, enrichment operations plant manager for Centrus subsidiary American Centrifuge Operating, at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Piketon, Ohio. Centrus built its high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) cascade in a leased facility there.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission must sign off on the plant’s operational readiness before Centrus can introduce uranium hexafluoride to any module of the centrifuge, which will then refine the feedstock into a concentration of 19.75% of uranium-235 by mass. That’s the upper boundary of low-enriched uranium, by international convention. Centrus’ hoped-for start depends on the commission starting its operational readiness and management reviews by April 3, Snider wrote in the letter.
Centrus on Nov. 30 signed a potentially 10-year, $1-billion contract with DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy to produce HALEU using the company’s new cascade of 16 AC100M-model centrifuges at Portsmouth. The company owes DOE a 20-kilogram test batch of HALEU by Dec. 31, 2023.
DOE wants to use the HALEU to aid development reactor designs that have yet to become commercially viable. The agency is also considering AC100 technology for national defense needs.
DOE’s autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration could eventually pick Centrus to refine uranium for Navy submarines and aircraft carriers and nuclear weapons. In the late 2040s, the agency will need more all-domestic low-enriched uranium to produce tritium for U.S. nuclear warheads and bombs. Centrus would have to build a new, 100% U.S.-made AC100 cascade to take on that work.
Meanwhile, Centrus’ existing cascade could be churning out HALEU for DOE’s nuclear energy programs into the 2030s. The base period of the contract the company got last year runs through December 2024 and is followed by a trio of three-year options that would run the contract out to 2032.
Centrus would owe DOE 3.6 metric tons of HALEU if the government picks up all of its options, or about 900 kilograms annually, beginning in December 2023.
