No major safety or operational issues were found during a recent Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspection of the American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio, clearing the way for the facility to produce high-assay, low-enriched uranium fuel.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) officials completed an inspection of the American Centrifuge Plant on Aug. 16. In a Sept. 7 letter to American Centrifuge General Manager Matt Snider, the NRC said it found “no violations of more than minor significance” during the inspection.
A resultant operational readiness review report for demonstrating production of high-assay, low-enriched uranium (HALEU) at the plant will not be released because it includes “security-related information,” Jannette Worosilo, the NRC’s Plant Support Division chief in the Division of Reactor Safety, wrote in the Sept. 7 letter.
The American Centrifuge Plant is under construction in Piketon and operated by Centrus Energy Corp, currently the only company in the U.S. with a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to produce HALEU.
In early February, the company completed construction and initial testing of a cascade of advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges, which it built under a cost-share contract with the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy.
HALEU is 19.75% uranium-235 by mass, just below the threshold of what is considered highly enriched uranium, under international conventions. DOE wants the HALEU to help commercialize reactor designs that require more energy-dense fuel.
To begin earning money from a follow-on DOE contract to operate the cascade, Centrus must produce a test batch of HALEU by year’s end for the agency’s approval. Centrus has said it plans to begin producing HALEU in October.
The deal to operate the 16-machine HALEU cascade at the agency’s Portsmouth Site near Piketon, Ohio, is worth up to $1 billion over 10 years, with options.
The contract could also give Centrus potentially valuable experience maintaining a supply chain for the AC100-M style centrifuges that will enrich the HALEU. DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration has considered using that type of centrifuge to enrich uranium for future nuclear weapons programs. The current HALEU cascade, however, is ineligible for the work because it contains some foreign-manufactured parts, Centrus has said.
