PIKETON, Ohio — The Portsmouth Site has converted depleted uranium hexafluoride from 4,500 legacy storage cylinders into a more stable chemical form, marking more than 20% of the site’s total cylinder inventory processed, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management.
The milestone also means crews have already exceeded the fiscal year 2026 target of converting 546 cylinders, hitting that goal roughly two months ahead of schedule, the agency said.
The depleted uranium hexafluoride, known as DUF6, is a byproduct left over from decades of uranium enrichment at the Piketon site. At its peak, the Portsmouth Site stored more than 20,000 of the cylinders. The conversion process chemically transforms the material into uranium oxide powder, a form the agency says is safer for long-term storage, potential reuse or disposal.
Each cylinder takes about 10 hours of heating followed by another 18 to 20 hours of processing to complete the conversion, according to the agency. Across all 4,500 cylinders converted so far, that adds up to roughly 135,000 hours of processing time.
Crews recently set a site record of 60 consecutive days of continuous production across all three conversion lines, the agency said.
“This is a tremendous accomplishment for our workforce,” Chris Richards, the DUF6 program manager, said in a statement.
Curtis Miller, operations manager for Mid-America Conversion Services, the contractor that took over conversion operations at the Piketon site, and Tim Warren, the contractor’s site program manager, along with DUF6 Plant Manager Pete Coutts, also credited the workforce for sustaining the pace of production, according to the release.
The information contained in this story was obtained from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management.
