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708 East Broad Street		Falls Church, VA 22046-3610
Tel: (703) 241-8711	Fax: (703) 241-8714	www.ricllc.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 7, 2000

For additional information contact:
James Jordan, President of the Radioactive Isolation Consortium james.jordan@ricllc.com

DOE Awards Contract to RIC

FALLS CHURCH, VA-- James Jordan, President of the Radioactive Isolation Consortium, LLC (RIC) announced that RIC received a Department of Energy research contract on September 1, 2000. The contract is in the amount of $2.85 million and covers a 10.5 month period.

"I am pleased to report that the company has successfully negotiated a research contract with the Department of Energy to continue testing RIC's Advanced Vitrification System (AVS)," Jordan said. "RIC will be producing borosilicate glass during these new tests and a battery of chemical analysis tests on the vitrified product will performed at the Diagnostic Instrumentation and Analysis Laboratory at Mississippi State University, he said."

Mr. Jordan explained that the Government has an interest in the AVS technology, which was invented at a National Lab by two of the scientists-turned-entrepreneurs who founded the company, Drs. Morris Reich and James R. Powell. Both scientists have numerous patents to their credit, the most prominent of them belonging to Dr. Powell, who co-invented superconducting Maglev technology.

In describing the background of the technology, Mr. Jordan stated, "The AVS technology solves the prior problems of in-can vitrification, which caused DOE to abandon early work on the concept in the 60's and 70's. The major reason why in-can vitrification was pursued back then was the projected cost, cleanliness and simplicity of the process. Today those same benefits have been captured in the AVS, which permits vitrification in the final disposal canister without destroying the canister."

RIC expects its technology to be a big success in the vitrification business. Mr. Jordan explained, "DOE Under Secretary Ernest Moniz remarked to the RIC management team at personal briefing for Dr. Moniz that the AVS is "elegant in its simplicity,' and this is the reason," Jordan said, "why it will eventually capture the entire market."

"The AVS," Jordan continued, "holds the potential to reduce vitrification costs by one-half. Once it is proven, projections are that it will save the government and the taxpayer tens of billions of dollars. And one of the major benefits is that its modularity permits it to be deployed at sites which hold both large and small quantities of high-level wastes."

"The disposable, single-use or single-cycle melter," Jordan said, "gives the AVS an enormous technical and economic advantage over other vitrification technologies in its capability to immobilize a variety of chemically distinct radioactive wastes." "The AVS holds other potential advantages, he added, "like an ability to economically address chemically difficult wastes, like the high chromium and zirconium contamiated radioactive wastes at Hanford, the calcined wastes at Idaho, plutonium wastes, the K-basin sludges at Hanford, and many types of mixed wastes present at numerous DOE sites."

Mr. Jordan stated, "As the word spreads, more in the Government are recognizing the diverse potential of the AVS single-use melter." He cited a recent report published by the National Academy of Sciences, "Alternative High-Level Waste Treatments at the Idaho National Energy and Environment Laboratory," which identified the advantages of the single-use melter for the processing of calcined wastes at Idaho. Mr Jordan noted that "Assistant Secretary of Energy, Dr. Carolyn Huntoon, testified before the Congress that the AVS was the only technology that had been presented to the Department that had the potential to immobilize the difficult calcined wastes at the Idaho facility."

"Of course we are pleased with this positive reception to RIC's innovative technology", Jordan said, "but, we are chafing at the bit to scale up the AVS to an operating prototype, so that we can get some hours and maturity on the technology." "We are beginning to test the market for support from the investment community," he said, "as a supplement to DOE's support, so that we can speed up the full-scale demonstration and deployment of the AVS technology."

Mr. Jordan concluded, "RIC welcomes this new contract from DOE and especially appreciates the opportunity to bring the AVS technology closer to deployment."

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