A New Mexico lawmaker questioned Tuesday why the Energy Department plans to issue a $115 million sole-source contract for Centrus Energy to build new uranium enrichment equipment at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio.
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) posed the question to Energy Secretary Rick Perry during a hearing DOE’s budget request for fiscal 2020. Heinrich said he finds the proposal odd given that the URENCO USA plant in Eunice, N.M. already provides over one-third of enriched uranium used by domestic nuclear power plants.
The senator asked why the budget request seeks taxpayer funding for “what effectively already exists” in the private sector.
“That company [URENCO] is not a United States-owned company and that is the real key here,” Perry replied. “We need a domestic supply of this high-assay uranium product” to fuel advanced reactors.
URENCO USA is part of the URENCO family of companies. The London area-based organization was founded in 1970 by the governments of Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
in January, DOE’s Nuclear Energy Oak Ridge Site Office in Tennessee said it would issue Centrus a contract worth up to $115 million over three years to construct 16 centrifuges, which would by October 2020 generate an unspecified quantity of 19.75-percent enriched uranium product known as high-assay low-enriched uranium.
The DOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is eyeing Centrus technology as a possible future source of low-enriched uranium needed to produce tritium for nuclear weapons.
“It has to do with the Department of Defense requirement to restore that market,” Perry added. The type of reactors that could use this fuel “may have a clear DOD nexus,” he added.
When pressed for details, Perry said he did not think he should discuss specifics during a public hearing. Perry invited Heinrich to discuss the issue in a secure facility at DOE headquarters. Heinrich said he would plan to do so.
