The Department of Energy is seeking expressions of interest for companies that could deploy established technology to recover up to 6,400 tons of radiologically surface-contaminated nickel from the Portsmouth Site in Ohio, the agency said Wednesday.
Information gleaned through the procurement notice, issued online, will help DOE determine if it’s worthwhile to clean up the contamination. The resulting high-purity nickel product could be used in commerce for products such as electric vehicle or grid scale batteries, the agency said in a press release.
The expressions of interest only apply to the nickel with some surface contamination from uranium enrichment at the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant. Since the nickel only has surface contamination, it is not subject to the DOE’s moratorium on the release of volumetrically contaminated metals, according to the release.
Any potential contract in the future would have to clear a number of hurdles, DOE said in the release. In addition to technical validation of the recovery process, DOE would also do an economic analysis and require that any classified information would be protected. The United Steelworkers Union has publicly supported the idea of nickel recovery at Portsmouth.
In the expression of interest material, the DOE said similar nickel recovery might be possible at the former gaseous diffusion plant sites at the Paducah Site in Kentucky and the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee. “However, this EOI [expression of interest] focuses on pursuit of viable technology for Portsmouth first, but may have potential applicability to the Paducah and Oak Ridge inventories at a later date.”
Responses to the technical packages are due July 11 and to the commercial interest package are Aug. 10, according to material accompanying the notice on SAM.gov.
