The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is still reviewing Centrus Energy Corp.’s plan for decommissioning an industrial-scale uranium enrichment demonstration in Piketon, Ohio, an official said Monday.
Centrus sent NRC its plan for dismantling the 1-square-mile American Centrifuge plant at the Energy Department’s Portsmouth site March 1, but the document “has not yet been approved,” Marvin Sykes, projects branch one chief at the division of fuel facility inspection for NRC’s region one office, said on a Monday conference call with Centrus officials and members of the public.
“It should be reviewed and approved shortly,” said Sykes.
Centrus’ decommissioning plan is under review at NRC’s Rockville, Md., headquarters in the Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards office’s Division of Decommissioning, Uranium Recovery, and Waste Programs.
Centrus estimates it will take until Dec. 31, 2017 and cost about $40 million to decontaminate and decommission the American Centrifuge plant in Ohio, which Congress defunded in 2015. Centrus says it will cost another $40 million on top of that to maintain the Piketon building that once housed the enrichment demonstration through 2019, when the company’s lease with the Energy Department expires.
EnergySolutions of Salt Lake City will process some low-level mixed waste from the American Centrifuge demo at the company’s commercially operated facility at DOE’s Oak Ridge site, according to Centrus regulatory filings with NRC.
Centrus plans to have much of the radioactive waste from the American Centrifuge plant trucked to DOE’s Nevada National Security Site for final disposal. The next-generation enrichment experiment operated for about three years. The company has continued some American Centrifuge technology demonstration at Oak Ridge under a one-year, $25-million contract with lab prime contractor UT-Battelle. The deal expires Sept. 30, 2017.
