DOE is seeking ways to potentially reuse contaminated nickel from Paducah site

The U.S. Department of Energy is looking for ways to potentially reuse a stockpile of volumetrically contaminated nickel stored at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant site.

There are about 9,700 tons of nickel stored at the site in western McCracken County. The DOE has issued what they call an Expression of Interest notice to determine if the technology exists to extract the nickel in such a way that it could be released back into commerce, according to a release.

The DOE said information from the Expression of Interest could help determine if there is a possibility of nickel extraction technology that could be at a commercial scale for use in the nuclear power industry, grid-scale batteries, or artificial intelligence.