The federal utility wants that amount in uranium enrichment services from American Centrifuge LLC over a 10-year period starting in 2016 and running through 2025.
The proposal was one of two contracts outlined by TVA’s chief operating officer Bill McCollum to TVA’s eight-member board of directors when they met Friday in Murphy, N.C.
The board approved the request unanimously.
Paul Jacobson, vice president of corporate communications for USEC, wasn’t certain when the USEC Inc. board of directors would act on the request.
In addition to nuclear power plants already operating, TVA is building a $2.5 billion plant in Watts Bar, Tenn.
The Watts Bar Unit 2 project began construction in 2007 and will be the first new reactor brought into commercial operation in the United States since Watts Bar Unit 1 in 1996.
The reactor, which has about 3,500 contract workers involved in its construction, will add 1,180 megawatts to the TVA power grid and will provide about 290 permanent jobs.
USEC Inc. and the U.S. Department of Energy on Feb. 16 agreed on a modification to their 2002 agreement that includes new milestones related to deployment of the American Centrifuge Plant at Piketon.
From the time of receiving the anticipated $2 billion federal loan guarantee and additional financing it has applied for, it will take about 24 months to begin initial commercial operations.
The modification shows commercial operation starting in 2014 and the plant reaching top capacity in September 2017.
The American Centrifuge Plant will produce enriched uranium, a key component of nuclear fuel used by nuclear power plants worldwide to produce electricity.
USEC’s subsidiary, United States Enrichment Corp., operates a nuclear fuel-producing plant at Paducah, Ky.
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