The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has given the go-ahead for Centrus to demonstrate production of high assay low-enriched uranium at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site near Piketon, Ohio.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Regional Administrator Laura Dudes on June 12 wrote Mathew Snider, general manager of American Centrifuge Operating, to officially authorize the introduction of uranium hexafluoride (UF6) into the high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) demonstration cascade modules at the American Centrifuge Plant.
“The NRC staff determined that the systems, structures and components designed to support the safe operation of the HALEU cascade were constructed in accordance with the requirements of your license,” Dudes wrote.
Specifically, an NRC review of the facility “provided reasonable assurance that the design, construction and implementation of items relied on for safety will protect against natural phenomena and the consequences of potential accidents,” Dudes wrote.
The company also must also demonstrate the ability to safely produce HALEU in order to cash in on a potentially 10-year, $1-billion contract with DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy. That requires Centrus to churn out a 20-kilogram test batch of DOE-approved HALEU by Dec. 31. The recent authorization applies only to that demonstration batch.
If all goes well, the contract base period will run for another year and could be followed by a trio of three-year options that would take the contract out to 2032. Centrus would owe DOE 3.6 metric tons of HALEU if the government picks up all of its options. That’s 900 kilograms a year, starting with calendar year 2024.
HALEU contains 19.75% uranium-235 by mass, just below what is conventionally considered high-enriched uranium. DOE wants to produce HALEU domestically to help develop new nuclear reactor designs. The NRC authorization explicitly prohibits the enrichment of uranium-235 to higher than that percentage, the letter said.
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), meanwhile, has considered using Centrus’ technology AC100M technology to produce uranium for national defense programs, including nuclear weapons and naval-reactor fuel. The NNSA has said it will need a new domestic uranium enrichment plant by the 2050s or so.