Centrus Energy Corp., Bethesda, Md., said Wednesday it will begin enriching energy-dense uranium fuel at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site near Piketon, Ohio, in October.
Centrus is in the prove-it phase of a contract, awarded in 2022 and worth up to $1 billion over 10 years, to operate a cascade of 16 AC100M centrifuges the company built in a leased building at Portsmouth under a separate DOE contract awarded in 2019.
The first phase of the operational contract’s two-year base period calls for Centrus to produce 20 kilograms of high assay low enriched uranium, or HALEU, for DOE inspection by Dec. 31. If the energy-dense fuel, which the agency plans to use for development of new nuclear-reactor designs, passes muster, Centrus would be on the hook to produce 900 kilograms of HALEU by December 2024 in the base period’s second phase.
Beyond the base, DOE holds a trio of three-year options that, if exercised, would require Centrus to produce 900 kilograms of HALEU annually.
HALEU is 19.75% uranium-235 by mass, just below the threshold of what is considered highly enriched uranium, under international conventions. Centrus’ AC100M machines were one of two centrifuge technologies that DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration has considered as the foundation of a future enrichment cascade for nuclear weapons and naval warships.
Centrus’ production license comes from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which gave the company approval to process HALEU at Portsmouth in June held a public meeting this week in Piketon to discuss its oversight of Centrus’ cascade there.
