Uranium Enrichment & Fuel Cycle

Cleanup of former uranium enrichment plants at the Energy Department’s Portsmouth and Paducah sites would be spared the ax under the short-term budget bill Congress is working to pass before Sept. 30, a draft of the legislation released by the Senate Appropriations Committee shows. Legally binding language in the draft continuing resolution stipulates that funding […]

Centrus Energy, of Bethesda, Md., said Thursday it has received a one-year, $25 million contract from UT-Battelle to continue the experimental uranium enrichment program known as the American Centrifuge at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. The American Centrifuge project has shrunk considerably since 2015, when the Energy Department pulled the plug on an […]

Cleanup of a former gaseous diffusion plant in Ohio would be underfunded by nearly $80 million on an annualized basis and layoffs will be imminent if Congress does not increase funding for the project next week, an Energy Department contractor said Thursday. The cleanup, funded under a 10-year, $2.6 billion contract with Fluor-BWXT, depends not only […]

On Monday, two more members of Ohio’s congressional delegation asked high-ranking appropriators to ensure cleanup work at the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant near Piketon, Ohio, is not interrupted because of the short-term spending bill slowly working its way across the Hill. The Senate is working this week on a so-called continuing resolution that will […]

The Obama administration, in proposing to export highly enriched uranium (HEU) to Europe, may violate a nonproliferation agreement it made in 2012 to move away from using HEU for European medical isotope production, according to a Sept. 7 letter sent by a group of nuclear experts to the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory […]

With the federal appropriations process up in the air, Ohio’s Senate delegation has asked the Senate Appropriations Committee to make sure there is enough funding in the rapidly approaching 2017 fiscal year to continue planned cleanup of the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant. “As the fiscal year ends, it does not appear that Congress […]

The Obama administration, in proposing to export highly enriched uranium (HEU) to Europe, may violate a nonproliferation agreement it made in 2012 to move away from using HEU for European medical isotope production, according to a Sept. 7 letter sent by a group of nuclear experts to the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory […]

With the federal appropriations process up in the air, Ohio’s Senate delegation has asked the Senate Appropriations Committee to make sure there is enough funding in the rapidly approaching 2017 fiscal year to continue planned cleanup of the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant. “As the fiscal year ends, it does not appear that Congress […]

AREVA has begun transferring nuclear fuel cycle activities to its newly formed NewCo, the French company announced Tuesday as part of a mass restructuring meant to raise at least 5 billion euros for the company through government investment and asset sales. The company has drawn up a draft partial transfer agreement, which AREVA SA will […]

Paducah-Area Congressman to Resign Tuesday Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), the U.S. congressman whose district includes the Energy Department’s Paducah site, said Monday he will resign effective Sept. 6, cutting short his final term in Congress following his decision not to seek re-election in the wake of an ethics investigation last year. Whitfield’s office announced the […]

The dust is now settling around building K-27 at the Energy Department’s Oak Ridge Reservation, marking a prominent, but by no means final milestone for the agency’s cleanup of the former uranium enrichment complex DOE is redeveloping into the East Tennessee Technology Park. When K-27 fell Tuesday, it marked the first time in the agency’s history that […]

In all but the literal sense, the dust has now settled around building K-27 at the Energy Department’s Oak Ridge Reservation, marking a prominent, but by no means final milestone for the agency’s cleanup of the former uranium enrichment facility at the eastern Tennessee site. On hand to witness the final demolition of the 383,000-square-foot […]

France’s AREVA said Tuesday it has begun transferring nuclear fuel cycle activities to its newly formed NewCo, part of a mass restructuring intended to raise at least 5 billion euros for the company through government investment and asset sales. The company has drawn up a draft partial transfer agreement “providing for a remuneration of the contribution calculated […]

If all goes according to schedule, building K-27, the last of five Cold War-era uranium enrichment plants at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge site in Tennessee, will be torn down Wednesday. It will mark the first time DOE’s Office of Environmental Management has demolished all of a site’s gaseous diffusion facilities. Five such buildings were built […]

Demolition of the fifth and final gaseous diffusion plant at the Energy Department’s Oak Ridge site in Tennessee is scheduled to wrap up on Aug. 30, contractor CH2M wrote Monday on its Twitter feed. Demolition activities began in February. “The final wall of K-27 will fall on August 30, 2016, completing demolition of all five uranium-enrichment gaseous […]

Several anti-nuclear groups are suing the Department of Energy and DOE officials because they believe the agency has not provided the necessary documents before authorizing up to 150 shipments of liquid highly enriched uranium (HEU) from Canada to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The Energy Department would not verify if shipments have started, […]

Nuclear medicine producer International Isotopes said Monday it recorded a 4 percent decrease in year-over-year revenue for the first six months of 2016, dropping from $3.52 million in 2015 to $3.39 million. However revenue for the second quarter, ending June 30, rose by 5 percent year over year, from $1.58 million in 2015 to $1.7 million […]

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 […]

Uranium fuel supplier Centrus Energy on Wednesday said it lost $2.9 million in the second quarter of 2016, or $0.32 per basic and diluted share. That was a notably smaller loss than the $15.1 million, or $1.68 per basic and diluted share, reported in the same period of 2015. The company said it still expects […]

Uranium conversion services provider ConverDyn has reached a settlement in federal court with the Energy Department, ending the company’s lawsuit alleging its business could suffer “irreparable harm” as a result of DOE increasing uranium transfer activities in 2014. Colorado-based ConverDyn sued DOE following a 2014 secretarial determination (an official decision handed down by the energy secretary), which […]

Allowing new exports of U.S. highly enriched uranium to Belgium would pose a significant security threat and violate both the letter of the law and the spirit of global efforts to wean nuclear facilities off the weapon-usable material, a University of Texas professor said Thursday in a petition against a license application before the Nuclear […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has received a license application for export of highly enriched uranium to be used for medical isotope production in Belgium. The applicant is the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee, which would provide 6.7 kilograms of uranium-235, contained in no more than 7.2 kilograms of uranium and […]

Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth got only about 28 percent of its available award fee for the six months ended March 28, according to the award fee determination scorecard published this week for the Energy Department’s prime contractor for decommissioning and decontamination of the former gaseous diffusion plant in Pike County, Ohio. That was good for roughly $6.8 […]

The Savannah River Site’s Citizens Advisory Board (CAB) on Tuesday approved a position paper opposing the Department of Energy facility’s possible receipt of 900 kilograms of highly enriched uranium (HEU) from Germany. The board has no authority in the matter, but its positions can be representative of the broader community on various topics. The paper, one of several […]

The Energy Department on Thursday put out to bid 10 years of deactivation and cleanup work for the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, a former uranium enrichment facility in Kentucky that shut down in 2013. Along with that contract, DOE soft-started a smaller procurement for technical services at the Portsmouth Paducah Project Office, releasing on Thursday […]

The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency will continue its oversight of the Department of Energy’s cleanup of the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant Site in south central Ohio, under a five-year, $3 million grant from DOE, The deal will be worth up to about $616,000 a year and will support ongoing activities funded under a previous grant […]

AREVA is selling its nuclear reactor manufacturing unit as it shifts its focus to nuclear fuel cycle services in forming a new spinoff called New Co, the French company announced Wednesday. The mass restructuring is expected to raise at least 5 billion euros for the company through government investment and asset sales, according to spokeswoman […]

AREVA is selling its nuclear reactor manufacturing unit as it shifts its focus to nuclear fuel cycle services in forming a new spinoff called New Co., the French company announced Wednesday. The mass restructuring is expected to raise at least 5 billion euros for the company through government investment and asset sales, according to spokeswoman Katherine Berezowskyj. […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) plans to extend for 26 months a contract to BWX Technologies’ Nuclear Operations Group to process enriched uranium scrap for the NNSA Production Office at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee, according to a notice posted Wednesday. The agency determined that BWXT is the “only known non-governmental U.S. […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission last week received a new license application for export of U.S. highly enriched uranium to a research reactor in Belgium. A copy of the June 3 document has been posted online. It cites the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Tennessee as the supplier of just over 134 […]