Centrus’ first HALEU batch will take 6 months longer, cost $24M more after equipment shortage

Centrus Energy Corp. will get until late June to deliver 900 kilograms of energy-dense uranium to the Department of Energy, the company said last week in a regulatory filing.

Centrus, Bethesda, Md., disclosed the extension, but not its terms, in a Thursday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The extension was foreshadowed in February when Centrus said that because of a shortage of storage cylinders DOE was contractually obligated to provide, the company would not be able to make the Nov. 6 delivery date under the second phase of its potentially $1-billion High-Assay, Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU) Operations Contract, signed in 2022 with DOE’s Office of Science.

Now, Centrus has until June 30 to deliver 900 kilograms of HALEU from its 16-machine cascade of AC100M centrifuges, operating in a leased facility on DOE’s Portsmouth Site near Piketon, Ohio. The value of the contract’s base period was also increased by $24 million, Centrus said in its filing last week.

Assuming the deliveries are complete by the end of June, and that the HALEU passes muster with DOE, the agency may pick up a trio of three-year contract options, each of which calls for Centrus to deliver another 900 kilograms of HALEU to the agency annually.

DOE wants to use the energy-dense uranium, enriched to the threshold of what is internationally considered highly enriched uranium, to help commercialize new commercial nuclear reactor designs.

Meanwhile, under a separate $6.2-million contract modification signed Sept. 28, DOE has also charged Centrus with procuring the needed 5B HALEU storage cylinders itself, the company said Oct. 29 in its latest 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The contract tweak also covers some facilities modifications, Centrus wrote in the 10-Q.

Centrus’ AC100M technology is one of two enrichment technologies the National Nuclear Security Administration is considering as the foundation of a future all-domestic enrichment facility that could produce uranium for defense programs. The company’s existing AC100 cascade contains some foreign-made parts and so cannot enrich uranium for defense programs, under international agreements to which the U.S. adheres.