Centrus Energy is asking the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to amend a nuclear material license at the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio. The application was filed as the company is closing out decommissioning of its American Centrifuge uranium enrichment demonstration project.
The nuclear material license was originally issued in February 2004 when Centrus (then known as USEC) was working under an Energy Department contract to dismantle and prepare to ship off-site contaminated and noncontaminated waste from the DOE’s retired Gas Centrifuge Enrichment Plant.
About 15 years later, the company expanded existing GCEP facilities for testing of its own centrifuge technologies.
In August 2006, USEC began operating its American Centrifuge (AC 100) test facility for advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges at Portsmouth. Centrus hopes to use the operational data to one day open a commercial uranium enrichment plant employing the technology.
Decontamination and decommissioning for the American Centrifuge (AC 100) cascade began in the second quarter of 2016, after DOE cut funding the project the prior year. Centrus had kept the demonstration afloat for a while with its own money.
Given the equipment at the lead cascade has already been removed under the existing license, the NRC said in a May 1 Federal Register notice that the review will largely be limited to decommissioning funding and dose assessment. Uranium hexafluoride (UF6) used in the demonstration cascade is the special nuclear material referenced in the license.
Comments on the application are due by July 2.
“NRC’s recent routine notice is one of the final steps in their process for reviewing and approving our decommissioning work, which we have completed at the facility,” Centrus spokesperson Jeremy Derryberry said in a Wednesday email. “We expect to receive that approval later this summer.”
