BWXT Applied sciences has gained a contract from the Nationwide Nuclear Safety Administration (NNSA) to guage choices for deploying a centrifuge pilot plant that would set up a brand new home uranium enrichment functionality appropriate for nationwide safety functions.
The Lynchburg, Virginia–primarily based firm on Aug. 26 mentioned the NNSA contract would kick off a yearlong engineering examine as the following section of the NNSA’s Home Uranium Enrichment Centrifuge Experiment (DUECE), a 2016-initiated program that seeks to develop superior centrifuge expertise to provide adequate enriched uranium for protection wants.
Reestablishing Home Uranium Enrichment Functionality
DUECE falls below the NNSA’s Home Uranium Enrichment (DUE) program, below which the NNSA’s Workplace of Strategic Supplies Manufacturing Modernization works to make sure a dependable provide of enriched uranium for nationwide safety missions, together with for low-enriched uranium (LEU) to assist tritium manufacturing and extremely enriched uranium (HEU) to gasoline naval nuclear propulsion.
As NNSA Administrator Jill Hruby famous throughout a speech on the East Tennessee Financial Council on Aug. 23, the U.S.’s crucial to reestablish a uranium enrichment program for protection functions will give attention to reclaiming “a functionality misplaced on the finish of the Chilly Warfare.” It stems from a broader technique to modernize and revitalize the NNSA’s nuclear safety infrastructure. The trouble is crucial to fulfill evolving international threats, she mentioned.
In July, the Senate Armed Companies Committee issued a report appended to the panel’s model of the 2025 Nationwide Protection Authorization Act (NDAA) that really helpful requiring the Power Secretary to establish and assess the viability of at the least two (and as much as 4) doable places that will, by 2035, be finest fitted to a “modular, scalable uranium enrichment facility.” The committee underscored considerations that the “incapacity of the U.S. to domestically produce unencumbered enriched uranium undermines the nationwide safety of the U.S. and that current packages throughout the Division of Power to discover numerous enrichment applied sciences will not be advancing at an enough tempo.”
Provided that the final government-owned enrichment facility, the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, closed in 2013, the NNSA has got down to develop and display centrifuge applied sciences and higher characterize their efficiency, reliability, and lifecycle prices. Since 2016, the semi-autonomous company throughout the DOE has funded analysis and improvement of small centrifuge expertise below the DUECE mission.
As a primary step, Oak Ridge Nationwide Laboratory (ORNL), which has developed and managed the DUECE mission, is slated to display the expertise in an engineering-scale cascade at an Oak Ridge, Tennessee facility. “Our precedence is to provide LEU to gasoline tritium-producing nuclear reactors,” Hruby mentioned on Friday. “Ultimately, DUECE expertise shall be deployed in a pilot plant to mature and characterize the expertise. Over the long run, we hope to leverage this pilot plant for future HEU manufacturing for naval nuclear propulsion,” she mentioned.
The contract introduced by BWXT on Monday will mark the beginning of a “deployment section,” primarily kicking off an exploration of choices for the centrifuge pilot plant’s deployment. The engineering examine goals “to tell the acquisition strategy for a pilot plant that can display the DUE centrifuge efficiency, reliability, and life-cycle prices for the NNSA. Fluor would be the engineering, procurement, and development service supplier for the exercise,” BWXT mentioned.
In keeping with the NNSA’s assertion of labor printed in April 2024, the examine shall be carried out by an organization that “has a demonstrated skill and willingness to deploy and function this pilot plant at amenities or properties owned (or leased) and operated by the corporate.” It’s going to entail an in depth evaluation of potential websites for the pilot plant, together with particular places, current amenities, gear wants, and staffing necessities. As well as, the examine is required to evaluate the advantages and dangers related to every possibility to make sure that the chosen strategy stays adaptable to a variety of future necessities and potential modifications. The NNSA indicated that future phases may entail facility design and licensing, and development and pilot operations, ultimately transitioning to HEU manufacturing.
BWXT Marks Entry Into the Home Uranium Enrichment Market
BWXT, whose subsidiary Nuclear Gas Companies Inc. will lead the engineering examine, on Monday famous that the NNSA’s ongoing efforts can even play a big function in sustaining and enhancing the U.S. uranium enrichment experience and expertise.
The DUECE mission notably marks BWXT’s entry into the home uranium enrichment market. “Given BWXT’s distinctive nuclear operations infrastructure and NRC Class 1 uranium dealing with and processing licenses, this enterprise aligns properly with BWXT’s long-standing technique to broaden its function within the nationwide safety nuclear gasoline cycle,” mentioned Kevin McCoy, president of BWXT Authorities Operations.
BWXT, already a significant provider of nuclear parts and gasoline to the U.S. authorities, is up to now making headway on a number of Protection-related tasks that would play a big function as the marketplace for superior nuclear develops.
Beneath a flagship mission with the Division of Protection’s (DOD’s) Strategic Capabilities Workplace (SCO), the corporate is working to fabricate and ship Challenge Pele, a 1-MWe to five MWe terrestrial high-temperature fuel reactor microreactor, with plans to deploy it at Idaho Nationwide Laboratory. Challenge Pele obtained full funding within the fiscal 2024 Protection Invoice and is at the moment within the procurement section. The Protection Supplemental Invoice, signed into legislation in April, helps NASA and the Protection Superior Analysis Initiatives Company’s DRACO mission, the primary demonstration of a nuclear thermal rocket engine. DRACO’s nuclear thermal propulsion system will use excessive assay low enriched uranium (HALEU), and it’s focused for a 2027 launch.
As POWER just lately reported, BWXT is collaborating with the Wyoming Power Authority (WEA) and Burns & McDonnell to advance the design and improvement of the BWXT Superior Nuclear Reactor (BANR). The 50-MWth microreactor has funding from the DOE’s Superior Reactor Demonstration Program’s (ARDP’s) Threat Discount program. In keeping with BWXT, BANR holds the potential to supply cogeneration for army operations, knowledge facilities, and distant mining operations. The microreactor expertise may be utilized to naval and house nuclear propulsion and energy efforts, it says.
In July, BWXT additionally mentioned it was evaluating places for a possible new TRI-structural ISOtropic particle gasoline (TRISO) nuclear gasoline manufacturing facility in Wyoming. The announcement marked BWXT’s foray into manufacturing TRISO gasoline to assist the rising superior reactor market.
—Sonal Patel is a POWER senior editor (@sonalcpatel, @POWERmagazine).
