USEC Inc., a global energy company, is a leading supplier of enriched uranium fuel for commercial nuclear power plants.
- Deploying the American Centrifuge, USEC's next generation uranium enrichment technology
- U.S. executive agent for the Megatons to Megawatts program, recycling nuclear warheads into electricity
- 2012 revenues of more than $1.92 billion
- Began operation as a private-sector corporation July 28, 1998
- Listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "USU"
- Nearly 1,700 employees currently work at our four U.S. locations. Headquartered in Bethesda, MD
Uranium Enrichment
Through its subsidiary, the United States Enrichment Corporation, USEC operates the only U.S.-owned uranium enrichment facility in the United States: a gaseous diffusion plant in Paducah, Kentucky.
Production of enriched uranium is a key step in producing nuclear fuel used by nuclear power plants worldwide to generate electricity.
The American Centrifuge Program
USEC is working to deploy the American Centrifuge, a gas centrifuge uranium enrichment technology, in the American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio.
This technology is a disciplined evolution of classified U.S. centrifuge technology originally developed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and successfully demonstrated during the 1980s. USEC has improved the DOE technology through advanced materials, updated electronics and design enhancements based on highly advanced computer modeling capabilities.
USEC and DOE are moving forward with a $350 million cooperative research, development and demonstration program to confirm the technical readiness of the American Centrifuge. The RD&D program supports building, installing, operating, and testing commercial plant support systems and a 120-machine cascade that would be incorporated in the American Centrifuge Plant.
USEC employees in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, are involved in the design, development, manufacturing and testing of centrifuge machines.
Megatons to Megawatts
USEC is the U.S. government’s exclusive executive agent for the Megatons to Megawatts program, a 20-year, $8 billion, commercially funded nuclear nonproliferation initiative of the U.S. and Russian governments. This unique program is recycling 500 metric tons of weapons-grade uranium taken from dismantled Russian nuclear warheads (the equivalent of 20,000 warheads) into low enriched uranium used by USEC’s customers to generate electricity. The program is scheduled to be completed in 2013.
A History of Reliability
Uranium enrichment for commercial nuclear reactors began in the 1960s, when the U.S. government shifted some of its enrichment capacity from military to civilian use.
In the early 1990s, USEC was created as a government corporation in order to restructure the government’s uranium enrichment operation and prepare it for sale to the private sector. USEC’s privatization was completed on July 28, 1998.
As an investor-owned company, USEC continues a 50-year tradition of reliability: all customer shipments have been made on time and within specification.
