Centrus sends first new centrifuge built at Oak Ridge to Piketon plant

On October 29, representatives from Centrus Energy Corp. joined government officials for a press event to commemorate the completion and shipment of the first centrifuge built for the expansion of the company's Piketon, Ohio, uranium enrichment plant.

Speaking at the Centrus Technology and Manufacturing Center in Oak Ridge, Tenn., Amir Vexler, the company's president and CEO, said, "This may sound like a simple shipment from one facility to another, but it represents something much larger. It connects American manufacturing in Tennessee and American uranium enrichment in Ohio . . . and it demonstrates that Centrus has assembled the specialized people capability and domestic supply chain to build this technology at scale."

Domestic and unobligated: Centrus intends to expand its enrichment capacity to support "large-scale production of LEU for the existing reactor fleet for baseload electricity, HALEU [high-assay low-enriched uranium] for next-generation reactors, and enrichment for national security needs," the company said.

Uranium used for national security projects must be unobligated, meaning that it must be produced entirely within the United States without use of foreign equipment or material.

Centrus's Technology and Manufacturing Center in Oak Ridge is the only plant in the United States building gas centrifuges for commercial uranium enrichment, a detail that would contribute to the uranium enriched with those centrifuges being categorized as unobligated. In contrast, the only commercial enrichment facility currently operating in the United States-Louisiana Energy Services' facility in Eunice, N.M.-does not produce unobligated uranium; the company is a subsidiary of Urenco USA and is a part of the London-headquartered Urenco Group.

In August, the Government Accountability Office issued a report in which it stated that the National Nuclear Security Administration is supplying national security missions through an existing supply of unobligated uranium that it estimates will last until the 2040s. The supply includes both LEU and HEU; the report noted that while unobligated HALEU could be required for future missions, such a need does not exist now.

Centrus's domestic supply chain efforts appear to be positioning the company to provide unobligated LEU and HALEU should it be needed. Similarly in January, BWX Technologies announced that it had begun manufacturing gas centrifuges at its Centrifuge Manufacturing Development Facility, also in Oak Ridge, with the goal of enriching unobligated uranium. However, unlike Centrus, BWXT does not plan to enrich uranium for the commercial market.

Expansion plans: Centrus initially announced its plans to invest more than $560 million in expanding production capacity at its Oak Ridge manufacturing plant in January. The announcement followed an award of $900 million from the Department of Energy for Centrus to produce HALEU at its American Centrifuge Plant in Ohio.

To support Centrus's expanded HALEU production as well as continued production of LEU, centrifuges manufactured at Oak Ridge will be assembled in cascades and added to the cascade already operating at the American Centrifuge Plant. Unlike Centrus's currently operating cascade, which began producing demonstration quantities of HALEU in 2023, the new cascades will feature centrifuges that contain solely U.S.-made parts, including centrifuge casings and other parts sourced through Centrus's acquisition of Westerman Holdings.

Patrick Brown, senior vice president of field operations and president of American Centrifuge Operating, noted at the October 29 event that the centrifuge being shipped from Oak Ridge represented the first of thousands that Centrus plans to build. "If anyone's been to the Pike[ton] facility, you see the thousands of holes in the ground," he said. "We're gonna fill one today. We have 11,519 to go."

Centrus expects its new centrifuge cascades to come on line in 2029.