PHOENIX — Demolition of the X-326 Process Building could be completed this July at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio and around the time, depleted uranium hexafluoride conversion operations might resume at the former gaseous diffusion plant, speakers told the attendees of Waste Management Symposia here Wednesday.
Remediation contractor Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth aims to finish tearing down the nearly half-mile long building by July, Joel Bradburne, manager of DOE’s Portsmouth-Paducah Project Office said. The rubble from the demolition is taken to the new on-site disposal facility, Bradburne said.
As early as June, depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) conversion could resume at Portsmouth, Mid America Conversion Services president Dutch Conrad said during the same panel discussion. A contractor readiness review is scheduled to start March 21 followed by a DOE readiness review in May with gradual resumption of DUF6 operations at Portsmouth targeted for June, he said.
DUF6 conversion into uranium oxide resumed at the Paducah Site in Kentucky at the end of November 2021, said Zak Lafontaine, DOE’s DUF6 project manager. By the end of the 2022 fiscal year on Sept. 30, DOE hopes the two plants will convert roughly 425 cylinders of DUF6 during the 12-month period, with about 100 coming from Portsmouth, Lafontaine said.
The DOE plan over the next five years is to convert 450 cylinders per year at Portsmouth and 600 per year at Paducah, according to Lafontaine.
The DUF6 conversion plants suspended operations with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. The plants stayed offline, even as other DOE operations resumed, while significant refurbishments were made, the DOE and contractor managers said.
Work was done to “eliminate single-point failures” that could knock the plants offline, Lafontaine said. Work ranged from better piping to installing new computer operating systems for the two plants that started running around 2010, he added.
DOE and Four Rivers Nuclear Partnership are doing studies in preparation for dismantling the C-400 building at the Paducah Site. It is “the size of a city block [8 acres] right in the center of our site,” said Tracey Duncan, DOE’s acting Paducah site lead.
