Teledyne Brown to supply American Centrifuge service modules
29 May 2008
Teledyne Brown Engineering has been awarded a $92 million contract by Usec to manufacture gas centrifuge service modules for the American Centrifuge uranium enrichment program.
In February, Teledyne Brown was awarded a $19.4 million contract to supply an initial complement of 36 gas centrifuge service modules - welded, steel frame structures with pipe headers and valves, control and instrumentation cabling, ventilation ductwork and electrical distribution cables. The individual machine isolation valves, power controls and instrumentation package are mounted on the service modules. These service modules can accommodate up to 20 AC100 centrifuge machines and are connected in series to support cascade operations.
The new contract calls for Teledyne Brown to supply 540 service modules for the American Centrifuge enrichment plant in Piketon, Ohio. The contract was awarded by Fluor acting as the agent for and on behalf of Usec. Fluor serves as the engineering procurement and construction manager for the plant.
In April, Usec announced that it had finalized the initial design for the AC100 centrifuge machine and
that 75% of the drawings had been released to strategic suppliers to begin manufacturing components. The remaining 25% are expected to be released by the end of June.
Usec said that it expects to complete its review of the comprehensive project budget and schedule for the American Centrifuge plant in late June.
The American Centrifuge Plant will use gas centrifuge technology based on a design originally developed by the US Department of Energy (DoE) but with design, material and manufacturing improvements. Usec has been testing and manufacturing individual machine components at its Centrifuge Technology Centre and K-1600 facilities in Oak Ridge since 2005. Usec began its centrifuge program at Oak Ridge in 2001.
Usec is working toward starting commercial plant operations at the American Centrifuge Plant in late 2009 and having some 11,500 machines deployed in 2012, which would provide about 3.8 million separative work units (SWU) of production based on current estimates of machine output and plant availability.