The Department of Energy has extended the deadline until Oct. 9 for companies interested in recycling about 6,400 tons of radiologically surface-contaminated nickel from the gaseous diffusion plant at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio.
The DOE Office of Environmental Management announced the new deadline in a June 22 notice on a federal procurement website. DOE first announced in April it wanted to hear expressions of interest on recovery efforts that could yield a high-purity nickel that could be used in commercial products such as electric vehicle batteries.
The prior deadlines were July 11 for technical validation of the nickel recovery process and Aug. 10 for the commercial-scale processing.
The expressions of interest are “only applicable to the nickel barrier material which has some level of surface contamination based on its use to enrich uranium fluoride gas,” according to the DOE notice. As a result, it is not subject to a moratorium on the release of volumetrically contaminated metals.
DOE and cleanup contractor Fluor-BWXT-Portsmouth actually studied a potential nickel project at Portsmouth back in 2012. Down the road, DOE could introduce nickel recovery at its other shuttered gaseous diffusion plants at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee and the Paducah Site in Kentucky, the agency said in the June notice. But Portsmouth is first in line. The head of the United Steelworkers local 1-689 at Portsmouth, Herman Potter, said there is believed to be significant nickel-coated equipment in the process buildings currently being taken down at the Piketon, Ohio site.
Material released last week in connection with the extension includes a 29-page summary of relevant environmental requirements.
