The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is still waiting for Centrus Energy to submit a cost and schedule estimate for decommissioning an industrial-scale uranium-enrichment demonstration plant in Piketon, Ohio.
“We expect to submit the plan in the coming weeks,” Centrus spokesman Jeremy Derryberry said by email Monday.
Centrus, the former United States Enrichment Corp., was to have submitted its detailed decommissioning plan for the shuttered American Centrifuge project to the NRC in September. At the last minute, the company asked the regulator for an extension, which was granted.
Centrus “anticipates submitting the DP for NRC review and approval by late November 2016,” John Corrado in Centrus’ regulatory affairs office wrote in a Sept. 28 letter to Amy Snyder, senior project manager for the NRC’s Materials Decommissioning Branch.
Also in the letter, Corrado asked that the NRC ignore an old American Centrifuge decommissioning funding plan the company filed in February, and which contains obsolete information. The agency agreed not to review the old plan — “provided that the submittal of your Decommissioning Plan (DP) occurs in the near future as indicated in your email,” Snyder wrote in a reply dated Oct. 3.
NRC spokeswoman Maureen Conley, reached by email, had no immediate comment Monday.
While Centrus has not yet provided the granular details the decommissioning plan would include, the company has said in financial disclosures that Piketon decommissioning would cost $40 million to $50 million and run through 2018 — more than a year longer than expected. That cost is on top of $15 million in decommissioning expenses the company racked up in the first nine months of 2016, filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission show.
DOE pulled funding for the American Centrifuge enrichment technology demo in 2015. Radioactive waste created by the project might be sent to DOE’s Nevada National Security Site for disposal, according to Centrus filings with the NRC.
