The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is soliciting bids for a potential five-year contract, encompasssing a one-year base and four single-year options, to store low-enriched uranium required for tritium production.
The semiautonomous Department of Energy branch, civilian steward of the U.S. nuclear weapon stockpile, released the solicitation last week. The agency wants new deals in place before similar contracts with commercial storage providers expire in June. Bids are due by 5 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on April 9, according to the procurement note.
Under the expiring contracts, the NNSA stores a total of about 165 metric tons of low-enriched uranium at commercial facilities in Eunice, N.M., and Columbia, S.C., according to documents released Thursday. Those are the sites, respectively, of URENCO USA’s National Enrichment Facility and Westinghouse Electric’s Columbia Fuel Fabrication Facility.
The NNSA is downblending its own stock of highly enriched uranium to create low-enriched uranium for tritium production. The agency needs the radioactive hydrogen isotope, which boosts the power of thermonuclear weapons, for ongoing modernization of the nation’s nuclear arsenal.
For this purpose, the agency says it requires unobligated uranium — which legally may be used in weapons programs — to power the commercial nuclear reactors that generate tritium. Currently, only the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar 1 reactor does the job. Watts Bar 2 was cleared last year to start irridiating tritium rods in November.
The current downblending program is a stopgap measure to sustain tritium supplies as the agency develops a domestic uranium enrichment capability that can produce unobligated uranium from scratch. The NNSA thinks downblending will put off the need for new enrichment until around the 2040s.
There NNSA is considering two centrifuge technologies for next-generation enrichment: one developed by Centrus Energy Corp., and another developed by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. The Centrus technology is further along in development, which has led the NNSA to postpone the day it chooses between the two until later this year, about a year later than expected.
