Nuclear Fuel Services, a subsidiary of BWXT, has been awarded a contract by the US National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to conduct a domestic uranium enrichment pilot plant study (see also the ANS story). The cost of the year-long contract is $3.3 million. This study, which is part of the NNSA's Domestic Uranium Enrichment (DUE) program, should "inform the acquisition approach for a DUE pilot plant that can be repurposed for High Enriched Uranium (HEU) production."

This effort is distinct from the program that seeks to establish the production of High-Assay LEU (HALEU) based on the American Centrifuges operated by Centrus. Instead, this program is based on the work of the Domestic Uranium Enrichment Centrifuge Experiment (DUECE) that has been carried out at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory since 2016. This work focuses on the development of a small centrifuge that can be used to produce LEU to fuel tritium producing nuclear reactors (see Tritium and Enriched Uranium Management Plan Through 2060). In addition, the NNSA "hope[s] to leverage this pilot plant for future Highly Enriched Uranium production for naval nuclear propulsion." The pilot plant is expected to begin LEU operations "by approximately 2030." It will also be required to demonstrate the capacity to produce HEU with enrichment of 93% or higher.

The Request for Information, released in July 2023, indicated that the capacity of the pilot plant after conversion for HEU production is expected to be about 50,000 SWU/year. The production-scale capacity is likely to be considerably higher.