USEC announced yesterday that it has completed construction of a full cascade of 120 centrifuge machines, a major milestone in a research, development and deployment cost-share program with the Department of Energy supporting the American Centrifuge Project. The cascade is “the centerpiece” of the program, according to a USEC release, and aims to demonstrate the technology on a commercial scale to make the project eligible for a DOE loan guarantee. “We’ve reached another milestone on time and on budget, so now we are moving to the next phase,” USEC CEO John Welch told RW Monitor yesterday. He added, “Now it’s a matter of bringing all those systems up, getting them running, which ultimately leads to the full integration tests of the machines and running the demonstration program starting around September.” The completed plant is designed to contain 96 cascades identical to the demonstration cascade.