BWCS REACHES OPERATIONAL MILESTONE AT PORTSMOUTH DUF6 PLANT

B&W Conversion Services, LLC, has reached an operational milestone at one of the Department of Energy’s two depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) conversion plants. Late last week, BWCS announced that the facility at the Portsmouth site had completed its “partial conversion operations phase,” meaning that all of the plant’s conversion lines had operated for a sustained period of time. According to BWCS, the Portsmouth facility, located near Piketon, Ohio, “had one or more lines running for 83 days” since the end of a scheduled maintenance outage period this spring. “The Piketon project team surpassed its multi-week demonstration goal by operating all three production lines at the plant continuously and simultaneously for 22.5 days from Aug. 1 to Aug. 24, when one of the three lines was brought down for equipment productivity improvements,” BWCS said.

The two DUF6 conversion plants, located at DOE’s Portsmouth and Paducah sites, are intended to help disposition more than 700,000 metric tons of material stored in thousands of cylinders at the two sites. The plants are used to convert the DUF6 into uranium oxide, a more stable material, for disposal; and hydrofluoric acid, which can be sold for reuse. BWCS is working to have both facilities complete their partial conversion operation phases by the end of this fiscal year. “DOE looks forward to the Paducah plant’s conclusion of their demonstration and moving on to establishing continuous production before the end of this fiscal year,” DOE Project Manager Jack Zimmerman said in last week’s release.