The Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Paducah Project Office and a contractor are installing a new system meant to cut downtime at depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) plants
The current DUF6 conversion process makes use of small vacuum pumps to take out residual uranium hexafluoride (UF6) from heated cylinders, DOE said in a Sept. 2 press release. But this system goes down a lot and is prone to significant repairs and lost time, DOE said.
Now, however, these pumps are being replaced by “cold box chambers to freeze the residual UF6 in receiving UF6 cylinders under vacuum,” DOE said in the press release. The new cold boxes are being manufactured in Cincinnati.
By installing this new system, DOE expects to cut the processing time for each cylinder by two to three hours, representing a 10% to 15% improvement, according to the press release.
The new cold box setup should be finished by the end of the year at the Paducah facility, with Portsmouth following in the fall next year.
“The new system also provides a means of transferring the entire volume of UF6 contents between cylinders in the gas phase, a capability not previously available at the DUF6 project,” DOE said in the press release.
“This upgrade represents a major step forward in our commitment to safe, efficient and cost-effective management of legacy nuclear materials,” Mid-America Conversion Services Program Manager Dutch Conrad said in the release.
Mid-America, a joint venture made up of Atkins, Westinghouse and Fluor, is getting ready to turn over the DUF6 controls next month to another AtkinsRealis-led team, Mission Conversion Services Alliance. In addition to AtkinsRéalis’ US, other members of the new team are Westinghouse Government Services and Jacobs Technology, which is now part of Amentum.
DOE recently announced that more than 1,000 canisters of DUF6 were converted into a more stable oxide former already in fiscal 2025, which ends Sept. 30.
DUF6 is left over from decades of uranium enrichment work at the former gaseous diffusion plants at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio and the Paducah Site in Kentucky.