The National Nuclear Security Administration began planning Monday for a contract to annually produce 400 metric tons of high purity depleted uranium for future nuclear-weapon manufacturing.
“Vendors should assume that a contract would be awarded by July 15, 2025,” the agency wrote in a request for information published Monday. Responses to the request for information are due at 12:00 p.m. Eastern time on May 24.
If that contract is awarded, it could supplement a planned National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) program to produce high purity depleted uranium at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Piketon, Ohio, as part of a follow-on contract to a pact now held by the Atkins-led Mid America Conversion Services.
The NNSA had planned to annually produce 250 tons of depleted uranium tetrafluoride, also called DUF4 and green salt, at Portsmouth. That material could be a feedstock for high purity depleted uranium metal.
In the request for information released Monday, the NNSA said it could also consider producing high purity depleted uranium with a feedstock of triuranium octoxide.
In its latest Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan, released in November, NNSA said its stockpile of depleted uranium could run out in 2030.
