Centrus Energy should wrap up $15 million worth of decontamination and decommissioning at the Energy Department’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee by Sept. 30, according to a financial filing Monday.
Last September, DOE issued the contract to the Maryland-based company to prepare the K-1600 building for demolition. Centrus leased space in K-1600 to further test its American Centrifuge uranium enrichment technology in recent years. The company’s government contract for the centrifuge work expired in September 2018.
“Under our lease with DOE, we will remove and dispose of government owned materials and equipment in order to render the facility non-contaminated and unclassified,” Centrus said in its 10-K annual financial report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Centrus has cited the remediation contract as one example of how it is generating new income while slogging through tough times in the nuclear fuel services business that followed the March 2011 meltdown of three power reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan. The company was awarded the K-1600 work after it dismantled its American Centrifuge demonstration cascade at the DOE Portsmouth Site in Ohio.
The company believes it has successfully completed decommissioning at the Ohio facility. Centrus expects to officially end its lease and return the area inside an existing process building which housed its 120-machine cascade to DOE on June 30 “in the same condition as the facility was in when it was leased to us,” accounting for normal wear-and-tear, the 10-K says.
On Jan. 7, DOE issued a notice of intent to award Centrus a contract potentially worth $115 million over three years to deploy a cascade of 16 centrifuges to demonstrate the ability to produce high assay, low-enriched uranium (HALEU), suitable for a range of military and civilian applications.
While Centrus has started contract talks with DOE about the proposed demonstration project, there is no assurance a deal will be reached and the project will go forward, the company noted.
