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During the past two years, a major focus for USEC’s American Centrifuge team has been working with leading companies to create a world-class industrial infrastructure needed to build components for the highly sophisticated AC100 machines and supporting equipment. The highly specialized U.S. manufacturing base needed to build the AC100 did not exist but is being established with USEC’s leadership.
In 2008, for example, the Company significantly refurbished a facility it purchased in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and installed new production machining equipment, robotics, and computer controls and testing systems to support the ramp-up to manufacturing centrifuge components.
In August 2009, USEC began a demobilization of the American Centrifuge project due to a delay in the Department of Energy’s review of the company’s application for a loan guarantee from to help finance the completion of the plant, which has affected the manufacturing of machine parts.
USEC is working with its strategic suppliers to maintain the manufacturing infrastructure developed over the last several years in order to be in a position to ramp back up at the time additional funding is received. USEC is building a limited number of additional AC100 production machines over the next several months. This would further demonstrate the manufacturability of the AC100 design and validate the quality assurance improvements instituted in the assembly process. In order to accomplish the goal of having the core manufacturing base in place and ready to go, the project’s suppliers would selectively continue to produce components for the AC100 production machine. However, without funding, further manufacturing will be limited.
USEC has contracted with B&W Clinch River, LLC, a subsidiary of the Babcock and Wilcox Co., to manufacture upper and lower suspension assemblies, cap assemblies and column parts at this facility. B&W is also responsible for assembling and balancing rotors, and procuring or manufacturing unclassified metal parts.
To better integrate the process of building components and assembling the machines, USEC continues to work with B&W Technical Services Group, Inc. toward establishing a joint venture. B&W employees have been producing the classified components at USEC’s American Centrifuge Technology and Manufacturing Center in Oak Ridge. In May 2009, USEC and B&W entered into a non-binding memorandum of understanding to form a joint venture that will establish a single point of accountability to provide integrated manufacturing and assembly of the AC100 centrifuge machines. As envisioned in the memorandum of understanding, the joint venture would manage all aspects of manufacturing the AC100 machines, including supply chain management through the integration of all suppliers and subcontractors and the assembly of the machines at Piketon.
Under contract arrangements with USEC, the Company’s suppliers have been helping to create the manufacturing base for a revitalized U.S. nuclear fuel industry.
A subsidiary of Alliant Techsystems Inc., or ATK, expanded facilities it has at the Allegany Ballistics Laboratory in Rocket Center, West Virginia. It will produce the tall, carbon-fiber rotor tubes for the centrifuges.
Major Tool & Machine, Inc. has built a new automated production facility at its Indianapolis, Indiana, plant to fabricate the steel casings for the machines and has delivered the first casings needed for the initial cascade of AC100 machines.
Teledyne Brown Engineering, Inc. has significantly expanded manufacturing capacity in Huntsville, Alabama, to produce 540 gas centrifuge service modules for the ACP. These steel frame structures hold valves, cabling, ductwork and electric supply. Each service module supports up to 20 AC100 machines.
Curtiss-Wright Electro-Mechanical Corporation of Cheswick, Pennsylvania, is providing the motor drives that spin the centrifuge rotor at very high speeds.