Majority Interest, page-46

If Wilmington were not meant for anything else than enrichment, I guess it would make a lot more economic sense to enrich the RepU from the tails to LEU directly at Paducah, wouldn’t it? Why build (initially, at least) two plants in two different states, when you can have one site that does both the reprocessing of depleted UF6 (from 0.30% average to 0.71% U235) and the enrichment to LEU (from 0.71% to 3.00% and above); surely the process is not that different?

I wouldn’t take that alone as evidence that Wilmington is going to be for recycling, though. An alternative possibility I see is that:

a) There isn’t going to be a full-scale plant in Wilmington initially
b) Paducah will be for both reprocessing of tails and subsequent enrichment to LEU
c) Wilmington will only be used for a demonstration of the commercial technology in 2020 (so there will have to be some degree of construction work associated with the setting up of control systems, a commercial-scale laser, etc., let’s call it “pilot” or whatever)
d) Having the “pilot” up and running in Wilmington would allow for a faster ramp-up of the enrichment effort if and when the SWU market recovers enough to justify two enrichment plants; meanwhile, Paducah would be a viable operation, subject to the U3O8 and conversion price not dropping much further

I may well be repeating stuff that has already been said by others, but doesn’t this seem reasonable?