Centrus Energy is asking the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to amend its 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.
In a May 1 Federal Register notice, the NRC is seeking comments on an “amendment” adding the Centrus decommissioning plan, which is required before the agency could consider a license termination plan, NRC spokesman Scott Burnell said by email.
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 Gas Centrifuge Enrichment Plant, which had been retired in 1985.
About 15 years later, the company expanded existing GCEP facilities for testing of its own centrifuge technologies.
In 2007, 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 off 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 the Federal Register notice the review will largely be technical.
“While Centrus has already finished some of its decommissioning under the authority of its existing license, the company’s not done yet,” according to the NRC’s Burnell. “What they submitted is a plan to take care of the remaining tasks, and the NRC is asking for comment on that plan. Once those tasks have been carried out, Centrus will come in with a separate license termination plan to end the process.”
According to Centrus and the Federal Register notice, virtually all of the remaining tasks involve submission of reports and documentation to NRC. NRC’s technical review and evaluation of the final decommissioning plan will include three elements: Review of decommissioning funding, dose assessment data, and a final status survey. This survey must meet standards of an Environmental Protection Agency manual on radiological protection.
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 spokesman Jeremy Derryberry said by email. “We expect to receive that approval later this summer.”
The physical work is done at the site. The NRC must still sign off on items including results of company radiological surveys, Derryberry said.
The demonstration, which involved a 120-machine cascade and related equipment, was housed in one of the two existing centrifuge process buildings at the DOE complex.
The Centrus lease with DOE for the American Centrifuge facilities in Ohio runs through summer 2019.
