The National Nuclear Security Administration has decided to use a cleanup facility in Ohio to help produce high-purity depleted uranium metal for nuclear weapons programs.
The semiautonomous Department of Energy weapons agency will do that by installing a fourth process line at the depleted uranium hexafluoride conversion facility at the Portsmouth Site near Piketon, Ohio, according to an amended record of decision published Thursday in the Federal Register.
The planned process line will convert depleted uranium hexafluoride into depleted uranium tetrafluoride (DUF4) using “utility equipment and materials identical to those currently in operation” by the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, which manages depleted uranium hexafluoride processing plants at Portsmouth and Paducah, Ky.
The NNSA will then contract a commercial vendor to process the DUF4, which ultimately will be turned into high-purity depleted uranium metal, the amended record of decision says. The metal is used to make “parts” for nuclear weapons life-extension programs, and for downblending highly enriched uranium into low-enriched uranium, according to the agency’s 2020 stockpile stewardship and management plan.
The NNSA is downblending its own stock of highly enriched uranium to create low-enriched uranium that can legally be used in commercial U.S. reactors to produce tritium for nuclear-weapon refurbishments.
The NNSA projects a shortfall of depleted uranium between fiscal years 2029 and 2031, according to the stockpile stewardship and management plan. The agency wants to begin procuring components for the future fourth line at Portsmouth as soon as this fiscal year.
The NNSA’s Material Recycle and Recovery program foots the bill for the high-purity depleted uranium restart. The program is part of the Strategic Materials Sustainment budget line within the Directed Stockpile Work line of the NNSA’s broader Weapons Activities budget.
Depleted uranium is a byproduct of uranium enrichment, and DOE has hundreds of thousands of metric tons of it left over from the Cold War arms buildup. The Environmental Management office is converting the material into depleted uranium oxide for disposal or future use, under a contract with the Atkins-led Mid-America Conversion Services. When DOE hired the Atkins-Fluor partnership in 2016, the company’s contract called for it to convert a little more than 750,000 tons of depleted uranium hexafluoride.
