DOE extends Centrus HALEU deal at Portsmouth into winter

The Department of Energy extended Centrus Energy Corp.’s contract to build a 16-machine enrichment cascade for advanced nuclear fuel at the Portsmouth Site in Piketon, Ohio, adding six months and $12 million to the sole-source deal.

DOE extended the 80/20 cost-share contract on April 20, boosting the agency’s share of the pact, awarded in 2019, to $140 million. The contract originally called, through an option, for Centrus to also produce 200 kilograms of high-assay-low-enriched (HALEU) uranium fuel by June 1.

But last year, DOE decided to instead solicit bids to operate the cascade, rather than earmark the work for Centrus directly. The competition was to start in May.

With the extension, Centrus will stay on the job at Portsmouth through November. The text of the extension was one of many documents appended to Centrus’ latest 10-Q filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission.

According to the extension, Centrus can remain at Portsmouth until November 30 “to facilitate a six month extension to the NRC [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] license” under which Centrus built — and hoped to operate — the cascade. However, the company may only continue working on the machines through August, unless DOE says otherwise.

DOE’s Environmental Management-Oak Ridge office issued the contract. The office owns the Portsmouth site, a shuttered gaseous diffusion uranium enrichment facility that fueled the U.S. nuclear arsenal during the Cold War arms race with the Soviet Union.

DOE awarded Centrus the sole source contract in hopes of stockpiling HALEU fuel for a series of advanced reactor designs the agency is trying to shepherd toward commercial viability.

However, the award has also provided Centrus with an opportunity to tune up the domestic supply chain for its AC100 machines, which are one of two foundational technologies the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) could use to build the next all-domestic enrichment cascade, which among other things could refine uranium for nuclear weapons.

The NNSA once planned to choose by 2019 between Centrus’ AC100 technology and a smaller, competing technology developed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. However, the agency has delayed the choice until at least 2024, according to its latest budget request. The agency needs new defense-usable uranium in 2045, initially to fuel civilian reactors operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority that make tritium for nuclear weapons.