In a paperwork move that officially marks the end of an era, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has removed uranium enrichment from the list of activities permitted under Centrus Energy Corp.’s license for the American Centrifuge project in Piketon, Ohio.
The order came down just before Christmas in a Dec. 23 letter to Stephen Toelle, Centrus’ director of regulatory affairs, from Craig Erlanger, director of the NRC’s Division of Fuel Cycle Safety, Safeguards, and environment review. The NRC posted the letter online Dec. 30.
Centrus petitioned the regulator to remove uranium enrichment from the license last summer after the company formerly known as U.S. Enrichment Corp. either removed all the gaseous uranium hexafluoride from the plant’s lead cascade centrifuges in Piketon, or removed hardware needed for enrichment from the premises entirely, according to the letter.
The NRC, which inspected the Piketon site in November, subsequently found “that conducting any enrichment of UF6 [uranium hexafluoride] is not physically possible” at the Piketon facility, Erlanger wrote.
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 work continues at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Radioactive waste produced by the project might be sent to DOE’s Nevada National Security Site for disposal, according to Centrus’ filings with the NRC.
