Nuclear fuel supplier Centrus Energy will report its 2016 earnings Tuesday afternoon and host its next quarterly earnings call with investors Wednesday.
Centrus, the former U.S. Enrichment Corp., is decommissioning and decontaminating the industrial-scale uranium enrichment demonstration known as the American Centrifuge project in Piketon, Ohio.
Centrus scheduled the call not long after Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) invited Energy Secretary Rick Perry to visit the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Piketon. Portman has been a constant critic of the Obama administration’s 2015 elimination of funding for the enrichment demonstration in Piketon and reminded Perry of the previous administration’s decision during the former Texas governor’s Jan. 19 confirmation hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Centrus thinks it will take until the end of 2018 and cost $40 million to $50 million to decommission the Piketon portion of the American Centrifuge project. That is on top of $15 million in decommissioning expenses the company racked up in the first nine months of 2016, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
American Centrifuge enrichment technology development continues at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Radioactive waste produced by the project might be sent to DOE’s Nevada National Security Site for disposal, according to Centrus’ filings with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The commission in December struck uranium enrichment from the list of activities permitted under Centrus’ license for the American Centrifuge project in Piketon.
