Today, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) Portsmouth Paducah Project Office (PPPO) issued an Expression of Interest (EOI) seeking industry input for operationally mature technologies to support the potential reuse of approximately 6400 tons of radiologically surface-contaminated nickel removed from the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant (GDP) as a part of ongoing cleanup activities.
The information gathered from this Expression of Interest will be used to determine whether it is in the DOE’s best interest to have industry remove the radiological contamination from the surface of the nickel to produce a high purity nickel product that may be released for use in commerce in accordance with DOE’s thresholds for release of materials without restriction (DOE Order 458.1).
The information gathered as part of this EOI may also be used in the future to develop an acquisition strategy for commercial (large) scale processing of the nickel to remove the surface contamination and support DOE initiatives such as clean energy or zero emission vehicles (e.g., electric vehicle or grid scale batteries). This EOI is only applicable to the nickel which has some level of surface contamination from uranium enrichment operations. Since the nickel only has surface contamination, it is not subject to the DOE’s moratorium on the release of volumetrically contaminated metals. This EOI focuses on viable technologies for Portsmouth first, as material from process building deactivation activities is available now.
The information may be used to support the development and implementation of an acquisition strategy for potential material recovery and processing, pending:
- Successful technical validation of the proposed process (including verification testing).
- Completion of an economic assessment, by DOE, of the proposed approach demonstrating, if appropriate, the overall advantages of the initiative.
- An acceptable strategy to address the classified aspects of the nickel during recovery and any processing.
- The development of an acceptable regulatory approval and environment impact evaluation approach.