The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is still reviewing Centrus Energy Corp.’s plans to ship radioactive waste from the canceled American Centrifuge plant in Piketon, Ohio, to the Energy Department’s Nevada National Security Site, throwing a wrench into the company’s plan to start moving waste by the end of March.
Centrus has also managed to lop a year off the timeline for decontaminating and decommissioning that industrial-scale uranium enrichment demonstration, a senior company executive indicated during the company’s latest earnings call with investors.
Centrus filed its waste transportation plan with the NRC in December and has modified the plan twice since, in January and February, according to a Feb. 24 regulatory filing posted online Tuesday by the regulator.
In the latest filing, Centrus said it would ship waste from the now-shuttered American Centrifuge lead cascade facility in Piketon “[u]pon NRC approval of the Transportation Security Plan and permanent burial site,” and that shipments could begin by March. However, an NRC spokesperson on Tuesday said “we have not yet completed our review.”
A Centrus spokesperson did not reply to requests for comment this week. The company has declined to describe the waste generated by the project because at least some of the material is classified or export-controlled.
In its Feb. 24 regulatory filing, Centrus said the waste headed to Nevada qualifies as “both Low Specific Activity material and Surface Contaminated Objects,” and that the company “believes that the planned shipments meet all applicable NRC and DOT [Department of Transportation] regulatory requirements.”
The American Centrifuge plant at Piketon was an industrial-scale demonstration for next-generation uranium enrichment technology. The Energy Department shut the demo down in 2015; Centrus, the former United States Enrichment Corp., then began decontamination and decommissioning last year. A smaller-scale American Centrifuge technology demonstration continues under contract to UT-Battelle, operator of DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
That work will continue through Sept. 30, under a roughly $25 million contract awarded to Centrus last year.
This week, Centrus reported it had lost $67.0 million, or $7.36 per share, in 2016, compared with a net loss of $187.4 million, or $20.82 per share, in 2015. The 2015 results included a $137.2 million charge related to the company’s bankruptcy reorganization in 2014.
In its latest earnings press release, Centrus estimated it will cost about $40 million to complete American Centrifuge decontamination and decommissioning. It will cost another $40 million or so to maintain the Piketon building that once housed the demo, and to keep the company’s NRC license to enrich uranium there live through 2019: the date Centrus’ lease with DOE on the Ohio facility expires.
During the company’s latest quarterly earnings call, Centrus Chief Financial Officer Stephen Greene said American Centrifuge decontamination and decommissioning will actually take about a year less than expected only months ago to complete. Greene told investor analysts the work in Piketon would last through 2017. In its third-quarter earnings release late last year, Centrus said this work would stretch through 2018.
