House Appropriators Raise Questions About Continuing American Centrifuge Project

House appropriators cut in half the Administration’s $100 million Fiscal Year 2016 request for work to sustain American Centrifuge uranium enrichment technology, but provided reprogramming authority to the National Nuclear Security Administration for the rest of the funding. The House Appropriations Committee will mark up the FY 2016 Energy and Water Appropriations Act today, and the report accompanying the bill released yesterday reveals the appropriators’ plans for the American Centrifuge project. The funding would primarily go to Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Centrus Energy Corp. to keep the American Centrifuge project running in warm standby, but House appropriators questioned keeping the project running, noting the goals of the demonstration project have been met.

Centrus is hoping to deploy a train of centrifuges for national security purposes, but the Department of Energy has not yet made any decisions on the future of the technology and will deliver a report to Congress this spring on tritium production and uranium enrichment needs. “There is little value to indefinitely operating the centrifuges if the Department cannot identify a near-term need to construct a national security train of centrifuges,” the committee said in the report.