The Department of Energy is inviting expressions of interest (EOI) from vendors interested in providing mature technology to potentially recycle 9,700 tons of volumetrically contaminated nickel stored at the Paducah Site in Kentucky.
DOE’s Portsmouth-Paducah Project office announced the nickel reuse EOI in a Friday Nov. 21 press release.
This EOI comes more than two years after DOE made a similar inquiry about nickel reuse from the former gaseous diffusion plant at the Portsmouth Site in Piketon, Ohio.
The nickel at Portsmouth and Paducah was removed from uranium enrichment equipment, smelted and cast into 1-ton ingots, according to Friday’s online procurement notice.
The DOE Office of Environmental Management said information gleaned from the EOI will help the department decide if it is practical to “selectively extract” the nickel from ingots at Paducah and make a “high-purity nickel product,” according to the press release.
DOE has been studying the idea of a commercial-scale processing center for nickel extraction technology, according to the press release.
Products using nickel hold potential for artificial intelligence, nuclear power and grid-scale batteries, according to the press release.
Responses are due by 3 p.m. Eastern Time on Feb. 19, 2026. The contact person is Jennifer Stokes, eoi@pppo.gov.