Centrus on Track to Produce HALEU Nuclear Fuel Material by Early 2022
The post Centrus on Track to Produce HALEU Nuclear Fuel Material by Early 2022 appeared first on POWER Magazine.
Centrus Energy, a firm under contract with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to demonstrate production of high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) with domestic technology, says it expects to begin producing the advanced nuclear fuel material by June 2022 at the American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio.
Centrus President and CEO Daniel Poneman said on March 23 that the company has kept construction of a cascade of 16 AC100M centrifuges on track despite the pandemic. The facility is being built and licensed under $ 115 million, cost-shared contract with the DOE that runs through May 2022. If completed as planned, Centrus expects its Piketon, Ohio, facility will “become the first plant in the nation licensed to produce HALEU, with enrichment levels up to a U-235 concentration just below 20%.”
The Urgency for HALEU
As POWER has reported, HALEU—a nuclear fuel material that is enriched to a higher degree (of between 5% and 20%) in the fissile isotope U-235—is not commercially available in the U.S.…