If you look at my post Post #: 76506058 from a few days ago you will see that they state it is for LEU and possibly Haleu. My thinking as to why they have made these press announcements relate to a flurry of similar announcements from potential opposition/ bidders in the RFP for enrichment services. The announcements from ASP isotopes in particular and LIS are direct and in your face. The one from Urenco is more about the huge cost of building (12 billion) enrichment facilities at Oak Ridge. Lets break them down. It is to do with influencing the decision makers preparing the awarding of contracts under the RFP. There is $3.4 billion at stake. Urenco will not qualify because they are not a USA company. The other 2 are making as much noise as they can because they do not have anywhere near a viable shovel ready technology to produce Leu or Haleu or re-enrichment of tails. Centrus is the outlier. They are wanting more funding to expand the pilot centrifuge plant owned by the DOE from which they are producing limited amounts of Haleu but nowhere near enough to be anything like commercial. All of them are basing their facilities at Oak Ridge, all competing for the same space. Centrus are in the box seat. Note that there are more tails stored at Oak Ridge that as yet no clean up solution as been found for.
The GLE announcement (the subject of this post) is much more subtle. Gle are at Pudcacah, already have secured the tails their and are contracted to DOE. What GLE are saying is that when (NOT IF) TRL6 is proven they will be in a substantially better position than any of the others including Centrus to commence commercial production of LEU, re-enrichment and even possible Haleu and the subtle bit of their announcement is it will come down to how much funding can be obtained from DOE. We now know from Urenco that that $10 to $12 billion is required to build a centrifuge plant. On the other hand we know that about 10 years ago it was going to cost only $900,000 to build a 6 million SWU laser enrichment plant. So with inflation lets say that is now in the 1.5 to 2 Billion ball park including re-enrichment.
The results of the RFP. It is a safe bet to say the Centrus will get a decent chunk but just for Haleu and undoubtedly so will GLE probably much more because of re-enrichment and LEU. The others may just get a few crumbs just to say it has been awarded competitively.
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