Centrus Energy Corp. plans to ship low-level waste from the decommissioned American Centrifuge uranium enrichment demonstration facility in Piketon, Ohio, to the Nevada National Security Site for disposal beginning in March, company filings with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission show.
“Planning and budgeting for the waste shipments by Centrus, the waste disposal contractor and the transportation company is well underway with the intended commncement date of March 2017,” Steven Toelle, Centrus’ director of regulatory affairs, wrote in a letter to Marc Dapas, director of the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards.
The letter, dated Dec. 6, was published Jan. 6 on the NRC website.
Centrus spokesman Jeremy Derryberry, in a Thursday email, said the American Centrifuge components going to Nevada were classified, and declined to discuss which specific components would be shipped to the desert site.
“Contaminated waste that does not require NNSS [Nevada National Security Site] disposal may be shipped to other approved low-level waste facilities,” Derryberry said.
Centrus thinks it will take until the end of 2018 and cost $40 million to $50 million to decommission the Piketon portion of the American Centrifuge project. That is on top of $15 million in decommissioning expenses the company racked up in the first nine months of 2016, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
DOE pulled funding for the American Centrifuge enrichment technology demonstration in 2015, though smaller-scale technology development continues at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee under a subcontract to lab prime UT Battelle.
