Like death and taxes, the federal regulatory process continues amid the COVID-19 pandemic, as evidenced by Centrus Energy’s submission of a license application to enrich a 19.75% enriched uranium fuel.
The Bethesda, Md.-based company is building a new 16-machine cascade based on its AC100M technology at the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Site near Piketon, Ohio. The Energy Department wants this high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) fuel to help pilot next-generation nuclear reactors. The agency needs a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) license to produce the material by March 1, 2022, according to the contract it signed with DOE in 2019.
In a press release Tuesday, the company announced the federal nuclear regulator had accepted the license application for review.
Centrus’ $115 million, 80-20 cost-share deal has two years of firm funding, a one-year option, and 14 milestones. Filing the application with the NRC is not one of the milestones, but getting approval to increase the allowed enrichment levels at Portsmouth — where Centrus is already licensed to enrich uranium up to 10% of the fissile uranium-235 isotope — is.
Centrus’ new cascade would produce uranium suitable only for peaceful uses, but the rigs could be modified to produce unobligated HALEU suitable for use in nuclear weapons programs, the company has said.
The AC100 technology is one of two that DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration is considering using for a next-generation domestic enrichment facility needed in the 2040s to generate low-enriched uranium to produce tritium used in nuclear weapons.
Centrus’ technology is, according to National Nuclear Security Administration, by far the more mature of the two. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee is developing the other system, sometimes called “small centrifuge.” Keeping the pressure on Centrus, the NNSA decided to delay its analysis of alternatives, essentially, the choice between the two technologies to late 2020. Last year at this time, NNSA thought it would make the choice in December 2019.
