Professional Project Services has received a three-year contract potentially worth more than $2.3 million to support construction by Centrus Energy of a 16-machine uranium enrichment cascade at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site near Piketon, Ohio.
Under the pact, which will employ the equivalent of 2.5 full-time employees, Professional Project Services (Pro2Serve), of Oak Ridge, Tenn., will provide “subject matter expert technical services … to support DOE activities associated with the planning and execution of DOE missions associated with the Centrus-owned Advanced Centrifuge Plant equipment and DOE owned equipment,” according to a limited source justification posted last week on the federal government’s procurement website.
Pro2Serve’s contract has a one-year base with two single-year options, according to the justification.
As of November, DOE had finalized an 80-20 cost-share contract with Bethesda, Md.-based nuclear supplier Centrus to build a 16-machine enrichment cascase at Portsmouth The deal is worth about $115 million. The Energy Department is funding the larger part of the accord, which has a two-year base and a one-year option.
Centrus must produce 600 kilograms of high-assay low-enriched uranium fuel by June 1, 2020. The fuel would contain 20% uranium-235 and could help DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy further develop “advanced” nuclear reactor designs for commercial and government markets. The all-domestic enrichment cascade could also demonstrate Centrus’ ability to source create a supply chain featuring only U.S. parts suitable for producing uranium for national defense needs.
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) which is not funding Centrus’ contract, is set to decide before the end of the year whether to use the company’s AC100-series technology for the next-generation U.S. enrichment facility, or whether to go with a competing technology developed at DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. The NNSA needs a new source of domestic, defense-usable uranium by the 2040s in order to produce more tritium for nuclear weapons.
Members of Congress have questioned whether the DOE should have awarded Centrus a sole-source contract for the 16-machine cascade.
