PIKETON, Ohio – The United States Enrichment Corporation recently reached a major milestone in support of the deployment of the American Centrifuge Plant when workers removed the last of the original centrifuge machines from one of two centrifuge process buildings at USEC's Piketon Plant.

The original machines were part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Gas Centrifuge Enrichment Plant (GCEP) that operated for a short time in the mid-1980s. USEC Inc. will lease those same facilities from DOE for the deployment of its advanced centrifuge technology for uranium enrichment.

In preparation for the American Centrifuge Demonstration Facility, DOE hired the United States Enrichment Corporation to remove the original 1,376 machines and prepare them for off-site shipment and disposal.

“We are extremely pleased with this wonderful accomplishment by the employees of The United States Enrichment Corporation, and we are very encouraged as this continues to pave the way for our operation of the demonstration facility,” said Dan Rogers, USEC Inc.'s director of the American Centrifuge Plant.

“This project was very challenging because we were doing something that had never been done before, removing and disassembling centrifuge machines on a large scale,” said Larry Cutlip, Director of Program Management and Strategic Planning, United States Enrichment Corporation. “We’ve been able to work this project on schedule, within budget and most importantly, in a safe manner that protects our employees and the environment.

Another challenge the project faced was the use of overhead cranes that had been shut down for more than 20 years. “We had to refurbish the computer hardware and recertify them before we could begin using them again,” said Lee Lawson, project manager.

Lawson is extremely proud of how employees took ownership of the project. “I couldn’t have asked for a better team, they were fantastic,” he said. The project required a crew of approximately 44 employees.

In addition to the removal of all of the original centrifuge machines, USEC also removed approximately 241,000 cubic feet of surplus and waste materials from the buildings. Once removed from their original location, USEC prepared machines for off-site shipment and disposal, which was completed by DOE’s remediation contractor LATA/Parallax Portsmouth, LLC.

USEC Inc., a global energy company, is a leading supplier of enriched uranium fuel for commercial nuclear power plants. It expects to deploy the next generation uranium enrichment technology in Piketon, Ohio – the American Centrifuge. The United States Enrichment Corporation, a subsidiary of USEC Inc., operates a uranium enrichment plant in Paducah, Kentucky, and does contract work for the U.S. Department of Energy in Piketon.

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