DOE PUSHING FOR FASTER PRODUCTION SCALEUP OF DUF6 PLANTS

The Department of Energy plans to enter into talks with B&W Conversion Services, LLC, the operating contractor for DOE’s depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) conversion plants, to accelerate efforts to get the plants operating at their designed throughput. While B&WCS currently plans to have the plants operating at a steady state commercial-scale rate by the end of Fiscal Year 2012, DOE believes that goal can be met sooner, according Bill Murphie, manager of the Department’s Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office. “I think the plan B&WCS is laying out is a very good plan. It’s a little conservative. I think they don’t want to overpromise. That’s fair. But we want to make sure that within the year that we achieve that goal. Exactly where in that year is going to be subject to some discussions and negotiations with B&WCS, but I think we’re all on the same page with respect to what the objective is and our desire to make that happen,” Murphie told WC Monitor. “I don’t think there’s any disagreement that by the end of [Fiscal Year] ‘12 we should be going like gangbusters. Whether it’s the very end of’ ‘12 or six months into ‘12, nine months into ‘12, exactly how quick that ramp-up goes—that’s what we want to talk about.”

The two plants, located at DOE’s Portsmouth and Paducah sites, are intended to help disposition more than 700,000 metric tons of DUF6 material stored in thousands of cylinders at the two sites. The plants are used to convert the DUF6 into uranium oxide, a more stable material, for disposal; and hydrofluoric acid, which can be sold for reuse. Last March, B&WCS took over as the plants’ operating contractor while they were in the midst of hot functional testing, and on Sept. 30 the contractor met a goal for having the plants deemed fully operational. While the plants are currently operating at 75 percent of design capacity, according to B&WCS, once they are operating at their design throughput they will process three-to-five cylinders per day. B&WCS will have good incentive to meet or exceed the planned schedule for getting the plants into full production, Murphie said. “To be quite candid, there’s a lot of money on the table with respect to fee that will incentivize them to achieve those goals. So I have no reason to believe they would have any reason not to want to meet the same objective we do,” he said, adding, “We have to do it safely, and we’re not going to compromise on that. The fact is we are learning as we go, they’re learning as they go and we are being asked to crystal ball something into the future, which is, as we’ve learned, very, very difficult for first-of-a-kind start-ups on new facilities that are operating with nuclear processes that require a significant amount of nuclear safety qualifications that we haven’t done a lot of lately.”