The Department of Energy wants a domestic supply of high-assay, low-enriched uranium for use in nuclear reactors and for other purposes and is inviting industry to hear about the program next month.
Ahead of an “anticipated action to acquire” high-assay, low-enriched uranium (HALEU), the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy is holding an industry day Aug. 8 at the offices of the Nuclear Energy Institute in Washington, D.C.
In-person attendance will be limited to those that submitted responses to either of the HALEU enrichment and deconversion draft requests for proposals.
“The purpose of this acquisition is to serve as a catalyst to establish a HALEU enrichment capability in the United States,” DOE said in a notice announcing the industry day. “For this acquisition, all enrichment and storage must occur from a physical location within the United States.”
HALEU is needed for use in research, development and demonstration of new nuclear reactors that require such fuel, the DOE said in a HALEU enrichment draft request for proposals released in June. Eventually, DOE plans to award a contract for the mining, conversion and enrichment of HALEU over a ten-year period from the date of award, the draft notice said.
The upcoming industry day should be “an opportunity to communicate how [DOE] intends to address topics identified in the responses received” from that draft solicitation and another specifically related to the “deconversion” of HALEU, which must be deconverted to other forms, like oxide or metal, before it can be fabricated into HALEU fuel or put to other use, according to DOE.
This acquisition is in parallel to a separate effort funded by the Nuclear Energy office, under which Centrus Corp., Bethesda, Md., is scheduled to demonstrate production of HALEU as soon as the end of 2023 at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site near Piketon, Ohio.
Rounding out the domestic uranium bonanza, DOE’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration recently restarted its efforts to select the underpinning technology for an all-domestic enrichment cascade that could be used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons and Navy warships.
The latest effort called the Domestic Uranium Enrichment Program, is also seeking industry input on setting up a plant to produce low-enriched uranium by 2030, according to a request for information published this week. The agency is currently conducting market research by evaluating acquisition options to enrich low-enriched uranium of 4.95 percent in a pilot plant, which can eventually be repurposed for refining the element to 93 percent of U-235 or greater.
