Six companies get DOE HALEU deconversion contracts

The Department of Energy last week awarded six contracts for turning future stocks of government-owned, high-assay low-enriched uranium into forms suitable for use as nuclear reactor fuel.

DOE made the awards a little less than a year after soliciting bids for the work. The six contracts combined are worth up to $800 million over 10 years, with each awardee to receive at least $2 million, DOE wrote in a Tuesday press release about the awards.

Each contract is an indefinite quantity, indefinite delivery deal with five-year task orders and one-year ordering period, meaning DOE has that long to get work started at its new contractors. The contract is one of two DOE plans to help jumpstart advanced nuclear-reactor designs.

Deconversion awardees are:

• BWX Technologies, Lynchburg, Va., through its Nuclear Fuel Services subsidiary in Erwin, Tenn.
• Centrus Energy Corp., Bethesda, Md., through its American Centrifuge Operating Co. subsidiary in Bethesda. 
• Framatome, Lynchburg, Va.
• GE Vernova, at its Global Nuclear Fuel-Americas facility in Wilmington, N.C. Global Nuclear Fuel is part of GE Hitachi.
• Orano Federal Services, Charlotte, N.C.
• Westinghouse Government Services, Hopkins, S.C.

According to the the solicitation for the  High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU) Deconversion Acquisition, winners will take delivery annually of up to six metric tons of HALEU in the form of uranium hexafluoride, to be deconverted into three metric tons of metal and three metric tons of uranium oxide. The resulting products would be packaged and stored at contractor facilities.

Although DOE did not say whether any of these companies relied on teaming arrangements, the agency did lay groundwork for cooperative bids on the contract. The threshold for major subcontractors on the pact was any company “anticipated to exceed at least $50 million of the $800 million ceiling.”

The deconversion contract is separate from the agency’s other planned HALEU acquisition, which was to focus on enriching uranium to 19.75% uranium 235 by mass. DOE solicited bids for the second contract in January.

Both of those contracts are separate from DOE’s contract with Centrus, under which the company is enriching HALEU at the agency’s Portsmouth Site near Piketon, Ohio.

There are no commercial reactors in the U.S. that use HALEU, but DOE wants to help bugshake HALEU-fueled reactors for possible commercial use in the future.