Centrus Energy expects the Department of Energy by Oct. 31 to finalize the company’s contract to build a new uranium enrichment cascade in Ohio, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
A temporary DOE letter contract with the Bethesda, Md., nuclear fuel company’s American Centrifuge Operating Co. subsidiary authorizes $6.4 million in early work as a bridge to what is expected to be a three-year, $115 million award that would expire June 1, 2022, Centrus said in a May 31 8-K statement.
Centrus plans to file copies of its letter contract with DOE on July 30, as part of the 10-Q filing that will accompany the company’s second-quarter earnings report, according to the 8-K.
The DOE Office of Nuclear Energy announced in January it would give Centrus the sole-source contract, covering two years of firm funding and a one-year option. The cascade Centrus will build must produce an unspecified quantity of 19.75-percent enriched uranium fuel known as high-assay low-enriched uranium.
The Energy Department wants the material for a pilot program for future advanced nuclear reactors. The program would be geared toward commercial nuclear power generation. However, the 16-machine cascade of AC-100M centrifuges Centrus will build will consist entirely with U.S. made components, making it eligible to enrich uranium for national defense purposes. The Energy Department’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration is considering AC-100 centrifuges and one other technology for future enrichment of defense uranium.
Meanwhile, the 8-K says, “in connection with the letter agreement,” Centrus’ United States Enrichment Corp. subsidiary has extended its lease at DOE’s Portsmouth Site in Piketon, Ohio. The lease, which was to expire on June 30, will now run through May 31, 2022, Centrus stated. American Centrifuge Operating Co. will sublease the facility.
Centrus was known as United States Enrichment Corp. prior to a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization that ended in 2014. The Portsmouth facilities the company is leasing once hosted the American Centrifuge Project demonstration that DOE canceled in 2015, and which Centrus subsequently had to decontaminate and decommission. The building itself remains.
Under its new contract, however, Centrus will not have to decontaminate and decommission the next cascade it builds in the facility for DOE, according to the 8-K.
“Any facilities or equipment constructed or installed under contract with DOE will be owned by DOE, may be returned to DOE in an ‘as is’ condition at the end of the lease term, and DOE would be responsible for its decontamination and decommissioning,” Centrus said.
