Centrus views on HALEU RFP

Centrus issued their Q1: 2023-05-08 Earnings Summary on 9th May 2023 - see the link below:

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4601969-centrus-energy-corp-leu-q1-2023-earnings-call-transcript

Import issue relating to the timing of the DoE HALEU RFP are:

"As a first step to address the critical need for HALEU, the Inflation Reduction Act signed in 2022 provided $700 million to help establish a domestic HALEU supply chain. Congress added another $100 million as part of the Omnibus Spending Bill at the end of last year.

In October, the Department of Energy issued a Sources Sought notice in anticipation of an eventual request for proposals. The Sources Sought notice outlined a robust program to purchase significant quantities of HALEU through 2032. Of course, additional appropriations would be required fully to implement that program.

Given how important HALEU is to our energy future and to America's global leadership in nuclear and given the fact that our country needs a new enrichment capability to meet long-term national security requirements, we hope that Congress and the administration can come together and make the investments that are required building on the strong down payment that was included in the Inflation Reduction Act. Centrus stands ready to do our part. Our facility is already licensed and we believe we offer the fastest path available to large-scale HALEU production.

Centrus also has the only deployment-ready US technology that can meet national security requirements for enriched uranium. And when it comes to national security enrichment, a US technology is required because long-standing US policy and binding nonproliferation agreements prohibit the use of any foreign origin enrichment technology for national security"

Rob Brown

I know you have the contracts in place for the HALEU production. But as that sort of looks to next steps and then some of this IRA support and the support after, how do you see that in terms of timeline? When do decisions get made and what are some of the next steps that extend that potential for you?

Dan Poneman

Well, great question, Rob, and good to talk to you. So, the $700 million is now in the process of being effectively translated through this request for proposals that we have been talking about. That will be the next important step. We don't know exactly what day it's going to come out. They've been working on it at the US Department of Energy and that's a very important milestone in funding the next phase to build up.

From a decision to make those kinds of investments and to raise the capital necessary to build to the next phase, we can end up building another cascade within about 42 months of a final investment decision.

And so that's sort of the timeline we're talking about. Building enrichment facilities is a matter that takes, as you know, Rob, a few years. And the critical path item here is getting that government contribution that will tell private capital that this is a safe bet to invest in.

Rob Brown

Okay. Thank you. That's great color. And then as you kind of think about investment, I think you've talked about this before, but how does that investment work? Does that still to be determined with the DOE contracting? Or do you expect it to be sort of similar to what the projects you've done thus far?

Dan Poneman

We really don't know, Rob, because that's exactly what we're expecting to see come out of the request for proposals. There's a number of ways to skin the cat. One way that's been talked about a lot is to use the power of government offtake demand to fund these investments.

There are other models like cost share models that have been used, for example, in the ARDP program. And so we're just curious as anybody, but we won't know really the structure of what it's going to be until we see that RFP rollout"

It interesting to see that the current Centrus HALEU cascade can produce about 900kg of HALEU per year and they will take at least 42 months for the FID to double their production - this falls well short of the DoE requirements for about 4 years time (i.e 2027) which is also about the same timescale for the PLEF to get into production