Centrus Energy Corp. (formerly USEC Inc.) is an American company that supplies nuclear fuel for use in nuclear power plants and works to develop and deploy advanced centrifuge technology to produce enriched uranium for commercial and government uses, including for national security. The American Centrifuge Plant (ACP) in Piketon, Ohio, was constructed by Centrus on the same site as other Centrus facilities. Contracts for delivery of high-assay, low-enriched (HALEU) were signed with the U.S. Department of Energy.
The ACP has made its first delivery of HALEU to the DoE. This marks the end of the first phase of a cost-share contract that was signed in 2022. The ACP is the first new U.S.-owned uranium enrichment plant using U.S. technology to begin production since 1954. The plant began enrichment operations in October.
HALEU is uranium enriched between five percent and twenty percent uranium-235. It will be used in the advanced nuclear fuel required for most of the next generation reactor designs that are currently under development. Nine advanced reactor designs have been approved under the Energy Department’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program. The DoE has been supporting activities to ensure the availability of the material for those reactors when needed. They also are assisting in the development of a domestic HALEU supply chain.
Daniel Poneman is the President and CEO of Centrus which owns the ACP. He said, “Centrus is proud to be pioneering American HALEU production, with our first delivery of the fuel that is urgently needed to support the demonstration and commercialization of advanced reactors. This critical milestone is essential to meeting the Department's near-term HALEU needs, while laying the groundwork for the full restoration of America's lost domestic uranium enrichment capacity.”
Construction of the sixteen-centrifuge demonstration cascade plant began in 2019. This work was carried out under a contract with the DoE. The two-phase contract awarded to Centrus last year included cost-shared funding to finish the cascade, complete final regulatory steps, and begin operating the cascade. The goal was to produce up to forty-four pounds of HALEU by the end of this year. The first phase of the contract called for Centrus and the DoE to each contribute about thirty million dollars to the overall cost of sixty million dollars.
The delivery by Centrus of more than forty-four pounds of HALEU to the DoE means that phase one of the contract has now been completed. Centrus can now move ahead with the second phase which consists of a full year of HALEU production which will produce one thousand nine hundred and eighty-four pounds of nuclear fuel.
Centrus says that with sufficient funding and offtake commitments, it could expand production. A full-scale cascade of one hundred and twenty centrifuges could be constructed in forty-two months following the securing of funding. It should be able to produce about thirteen thousand two hundred pounds of HALEU per year. More cascades of centrifuges could be added after that. Centrus says that construction and operation of such a plant would support thousands of direct and indirect jobs across a nationwide manufacturing supply chain.