Centrus Finally Clinches ACP Follow-on Contract at Oak Ridge

Almost six months after it declared the deal all but done, Centrus Energy Corp. said Monday it has signed a contract to continue some work on new U.S.-designed uranium enrichment technology at the Energy Department’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

Centrus’ new centrifuge technology advancement subcontract with Oak Ridge prime contractor UT-Battelle is worth $32.3 million and runs through Sept. 30, Centrus wrote in a press release about the long-awaited deal.

The Bethesda, Md.-based company has been working on this uranium-enrichment technology at Oak Ridge for years, but the bulk of development was centered at the now-canceled American Centrifuge Plant (ACP) — a massive demonstration facility that connected 120 centrifuges together to simulate industrial-scale enrichment.

Although the project has been lauded as a technological success, DOE in September said it would no longer fund the ACP demo at Piketon, Ohio. That same month, a Centrus press release said related work at Oak Ridge work would be saved from the ax under a new UT-Battelle subcontract that would phase in Oct. 31 and run through Sept. 30.

It evidently took a little longer than Centrus expected to finalize the deal, under which the company will  “continue advancing the technology – identifying further improvements to reduce costs, improve manufacturability, and enhance long-term reliability of its enrichment operations,” according to the company’s press release.

Prior to signing the new contract, Centrus had paid out of its own pocket to continue American Centrifuge work at Oak Ridge. The cost of self-funding that work rang in at $7.7 million as of Dec. 31, according to the 2015 earnings report the company filed last week with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The contract Centrus announced Monday is worth about half of what the company made under the predecessor contract with UT-Battelle, when the Piketon demonstration was in full swing.