Centrus Energy is still trying to get a handle on how much it will cost, and how long it will take, to decontaminate and decommission the industrial-scale uranium enrichment demonstration known as the American Centrifuge Project that was taken off life support in Pike County, Ohio, earlier this year, according to filings with U.S. financial and nuclear regulators.
“We have experienced delays in beginning the D&D as we work to finalize necessary contractual and regulatory arrangements,” Daniel Poneman, Centrus’ president and CEO, said in a Thursday conference call with investors. “We’re evaluating the impact the delays will have on future costs,” the former deputy energy secretary said.
Centrus is the former United States Enrichment Corp. The company reinvented itself as a fuel broker for commercial nuclear power plants after a 2014 bankruptcy reorganization, and has so far paid for five months worth of American Centrifuge Project (ACP) decontamination and decommissioning at the facility out of its own pocket.
Centrus spokesman Jeremy Derryberry told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing on Friday that ACP cleanup would continue into early 2017.
The exact cost and schedule of D&D will be outlined in an appendix to the detailed decommissioning plan Centrus eventually will file with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The company once thought it could submit the decommissioning plan for the main ACP cascade in mid-July, according to a PowerPoint presentation the company briefed at the NRC’s Rockville, Md., headquarters June 16 during a Lead Cascade Decommissioning Plan Pre-Submittal Meeting.
However, when mid-July rolled around, Centrus wrote NRC asking for more time to file the decommissioning plan, and put the agency on notice that the company might need help with the cleanup.
[T]he updated cost estimate will provide a better basis for establishing the amount of financial assurance required in the event that use of a third party to complete decommissioning was necessary,” Steven Toelle, Centrus’ director of regulatory affairs, wrote in a July 21 letter to Scott Moore, then-acting director of the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards.
Backstopping the cleanup at Piketon are $29 million in surety bonds, covering $16 million for decontamination and decommissioning and $13 million for lease expenses, Poneman said on the conference call. As of June 30, Centrus had racked up about $25 million in liability for decontamination and demolition charges alone, according to the CEO.
Besides decontaminating and decommissioning the building itself, Centrus also must dispose of classified and contaminated waste generated by three years of uranium-enrichment technology demonstration at Piketon. According to the June 16 slides briefed at NRC headquarters, Centrus plans to dispose of ACP waste at DOE’s Nevada National Security Site.
As it grapples with delays on the cleanup, Centrus must also decide — and soon — whether to give up its lease to the DOE-owned Piketon ACP facility. The company’s five-year lease runs out in 2019, and the terms of the deal require Centrus to give DOE three years notice before moving out, according to the company’s annual 10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for 2015.
For now, Centrus is keeping its cards close to the vest.
“Centrus has not made a decision on lease turnover and is continuing to evaluate future uses for the site,” the company wrote in its latest quarterly earnings statement.
If Centrus does hang on to the Piketon building, the company could be a local fixture for decades to come. The company has the right, but not the obligation, to extend its lease into the early 2040s, and then again into the early 2060s, according to its 2015 10-K filing.
