Centrus Energy, headquartered in Bethesda, Md., has been awarded an extended contract with the Department of Energy, worth about $110 million, to produce high-assay low-enriched uranium through June 30, 2026.
In 2022, Centrus was awarded a three-phase follow-on contract to bring the cascade into production and produce HALEU for DOE’s use. DOE has exercised its first year option after a contractual amendment to split the first-three year extension into a one-year extension followed by a two-year option, according to Centrus Friday press release.
DOE initially contracted with Centrus to license and construct a cascade of advanced centrifuges to demonstrate HALEU production at Centrus’s American Centrifuge Plant at the Portsmouth Site in Piketon, Ohio.
Waste Control Specialists (WCS) received a lot of radioactive waste by train at its West Texas site during 2024, company president David Carlson told Exchange Monitor’s Radwaste Summit last week in Savannah, Ga.
During 2024, WCS received 600 shipments of waste by rail. This included 5,000 canisters and 3 million cubic feet of waste, according to Carlson’s presentation. WCS is served by two major railroads, Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe, Carlson said. In addition there are five miles of rail line from Waste Control Specialists to Eunice, N.M., where a Urenco USA enrichment facility is located.
Waste Control Specialists provides treatment, storage and disposal for various types of low-level radioactive waste and related material at its complex in Andrews County, Texas. “WCS has the only rail line in Andrews County,” Carlson said in his June 11 slide presentation.
Work crews using heavy equipment have torn down a 1960s era train shed at the Department of Energy’s Nevada National Security Site, DOE announced last week.
“We are pleased to get this structure to the ground as part of our long term cleanup mission,” DOE Office of Environmental Management Nevada Program Manager Robert Boehlecke said in a June 10 news release.
The structure, officially Building 3901 but more commonly called the “train shed,” is part of the Engine Maintenance, Assembly and Disassembly complex at the Nevada National Security Site, according to the release. With the train shed down, contractor Navarro Research & Engineering will now turn its attention to the rest of the 100,000-square-feet Engine Maintenance, Assembly and Disassembly center, which includes what was once the largest hot cell in the world, according to DOE.
Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Christopher Hanson was fired late Friday June 13 by President Donald Trump, according to Hanson’s Monday LinkedIn post.
“Late on Friday, President Trump terminated my position with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission without cause, contrary to existing law and longstanding precedent regarding removal of independent agency appointees,” Hanson said.
A NRC spokesperson confirmed the termination of Hanson as a NRC commissioner took place on June 13. “The NRC has functioned in the past with fewer than five commissioners and will continue to do so,” the NRC spokesperson added. Also this past week, Trump re-nominated NRC Chair David Wright to another term on the commission.
Triso-X is targeting Dec. 6, 2027, for production of its first “pebble” of fabricated nuclear fuel at its facility located on land formerly owned by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, a company executive told Exchange Monitor’s Radwaste Summit in Savannah, Ga. on Thursday June 12.
The 215,000-square-foot fuel fabrication facility, called TX-1, will employ about 463 people, said Triso-X Vice President Gary Bell in a presentation to Exchange Monitor’s Radwaste Summit.
Triso’s Horizon Center Industrial Park is being developed on 110 acres of reclaimed land formerly held by DOE at the Oak Ridge Site, Bell said. Triso-X is part of X-energy, a small modular reactor company based in the Greater Washington, D.C. area. In December, X-energy picked Geiger Brothers to build the TX-1 plant that will make fuel for the early deployments of the Xe-100 High-Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor, according to a press release.