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Since 2001, United States Enrichment Corporation, under a contract with the U.S. Department of Energy, has maintained the process buildings and enrichment equipment at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in cold standby condition to allow for a restart of enrichment operations in the future, if necessary.
Some of the work includes modifying the process buildings to provide heat that was formerly generated by the equipment when it was in operation.
USEC employees also remove residual uranium deposits from plant enrichment equipment. Removing these deposits chemically with the process equipment intact reduces the risks associated with exposure hazards during future decontamination and decommissioning (D&D).
The plant is now being transitioned to Cold Shutdown, a pre-cursor to the D&D of the plant.
The Cold Shutdown program is designed to reduce risks and shrink primary protection areas at the plant in order to shorten the time required for D&D and to make it more cost effective for DOE and U.S. taxpayers.