The Department of Energy awarded a subsidiary of Centrus Energy Corp., Bethesda, Md., a potentially 10-year contract to operate the company’s own uranium enrichment centrifuge at the Portsmouth site near Piketon, Ohio.
DOE did not disclose the total value of the HALEU Demonstration Cascade Completion and HALEU Production contract in its award announcement on Thursday. DOE did not say in its award announcement how many proposals it received for the notionally open competition for the contract.
Centrus and the government will split the $30-million cost of the one-year base-period, under which the company must complete the 16-machine cascade of AC100M machines it built under a sole-source contract DOE awarded in 2019 and then produce 20 kilograms of energy-dense low enriched uranium by December 2023.
Annually, the 16-machine cascade could produce about one metric ton of high assay low enriched uranium (HALEU), just over the 900 kilograms called for under each of the contract’s three three-year option periods, Centrus CEO Daniel Poneman, a former deputy secretary of energy, said on a company earnings call last week.
HALEU contains 19.75% uranium-235 by mass, just below the threshold of what is conventionally considered high enriched uranium. DOE wants to establish a means of producing HALEU domestically to aid with research and development of reactor designs that require that level of enrichment.
An all-domestic enrichment cascade, which Centrus’ 16-machine setup in Ohio is not, could also allow DOE to produce uranium for nuclear weapons and Navy warships. DOE’s National Nuclear Security administration says it needs a new all-domestic source of uranium, enriched by all-domestic machines, by the 2050s or so.
DOE once had plans that would have allowed the government to let Centrus complete and operate the 16-machine cascade in Ohio under the sole source contract awarded in 2019. However, in December 2021, the government decided instead to cancel the option on the cascade construction contract that would have let Centrus produce HALEU and instead write a new contract that called for production of a much larger volume of HALEU.
The new production contract, to complete and operate the machines built by Centrus, was notionally open to all comers, though it was not clear whether companies with the capability to enrich uranium in the U.S. bid for the work.
When the HALEU Demonstration Cascade Completion and HALEU Production contract hit the streets in August, neither Orano USA nor Urenco USA, domestic arms of European-domiciled enrichment companies, would say if they planned to bid.
Orano USA in March released a statement that it had responded to a request for information DOE released before it put the HALEU production contract out for bids. A spokesperson at that time declined to elaborate on the company’s public statement.
