Options, split: The DOE is exercising an option to extend Centrus’s contract into Phase III—but only after splitting a contractual three-year extension option in two: a one-year extension and a two-year extension.
Phase III was to include three optional extension periods of three years each, for up to nine additional production years at an annual rate of 900 kg of HALEU UF6. Centrus reported that on June 17, the DOE executed a contract amendment to split the first three-year extension period in two and exercise a one-year option.
Now that the DOE has opted for a one-year extension, options remain to extend production for eight years. All HALEU produced under the contract is owned and controlled by the DOE.
“This extension reflects the ongoing value of the partnership that the department launched with Centrus in 2019 to restore America’s ability to enrich uranium and provide a source of HALEU that the Department and the nation urgently need,” said Centrus president and CEO Amir Vexler on June 20. “We are delivering meaningful quantities of HALEU to catalyze a new generation of reactors while laying the groundwork to establish a large-scale, U.S.-owned uranium enrichment capability to meet America’s commercial and national security requirements.”
Timeline: In 2019, the Department of Energy contracted with Centrus to license and construct a cascade of advanced centrifuges to demonstrate HALEU production at the American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio.
In November 2022, Centrus and the DOE agreed on contract terms to bring the cascade into production. (That contract amounted to an extension of the three-year contract signed by the parties in October 2019; the original contract called for the first production of HALEU by June 2022.) Centrus completed the cost-shared Phase I of the contract in late 2023 by delivering 20 kg of HALEU.
Phase II called for Centrus to produce an additional 900 kg of HALEU within one year, but a lack of sufficient HALEU storage cylinders has delayed delivery. The DOE, which was contractually required to supply storage cylinders, was faced with “delay in obtaining sufficient storage cylinders to complete Phase 2 of the HALEU Operation Contract, in November 2024, DOE extended Phase 2 to June 30, 2025.”
At the same time, the contractual value of Phase II was increased to $152.3 million. (In November 2022, the value of the cost-plus-incentive-fee basis Phase II was estimated at $90 million.)
According to Centrus’s first quarter 2025 results, “using the storage cylinders currently made available by the DOE, Centrus achieved cumulative deliveries to the DOE of approximately 670 kg of HALEU UF6 as of March 31, 2025.”
Other contracts: In October 2024, the DOE named six companies to provide HALEU deconversion services, and nine days later announced four companies that would get up to $2.7 billion in future HALEU enrichment task orders. Centrus was named in both groups, and in November the company announced it would invest about $60 million to resume manufacturing new enrichment centrifuges at a facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
In December 2024, the DOE followed its HALEU contracting by naming six companies eligible to receive enrichment task orders for low-enriched uranium, with Centrus among them. Centrus reported in its first-quarter 2025 results that in April 2025, the company received a time and materials task order with a total award ceiling of $0.5 million under the LEU enrichment contract.
