Centrus to supply Radiant with microreactor fuel

Under the agreement, Centrus will begin delivering high-assay, low-enriched uranium (HALEU) before the end of the decade, adding another domestic source of fuel to support commercial scale-up of Radiant's Kaleidos fleet.

HALEU fuel enriched to between 5% and 20% of the fissile uranium-235 isotope will be needed to fuel many of the advanced reactor designs that are under development. With no commercial source of the material in the USA, the US Department of Energy has been actively supporting the development of a domestic US supply chain. In 2019, it awarded Centrus a contract to license and construct a cascade of advanced centrifuges to demonstrate HALEU production at the American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio, and in 2022 selected the company through a competitive process for the three-phase follow-on contract to bring the cascade into production and to deliver HALEU for the DOE's use. 

Last year, Centrus announced plans for a major expansion of the plant to boost production of both low-enriched uranium and HALEU. The expansion is expected to create 1,000 construction jobs and 300 new operating jobs in Ohio alone, while retaining the 150 jobs that existed at the Piketon plant when the expansion began, the company said.

Centrus said the contract with Radiant further strengthens its position as "a leading fuel supplier for next generation nuclear technologies while expanding its role in the emerging microreactor market".

The agreement includes Radiant prepayments to Centrus to support its domestic commercial enrichment capacity programme. For Radiant, the contract adds another domestic source of HALEU as the company moves from its first Kaleidos test toward commercial and national security deployments, reinforcing the fuel supply it continues to build in parallel with the reactor itself.

"The contract with Radiant marks another important step in building the domestic fuel supply chain needed to support the next generation of nuclear energy," said Amir Vexler, President and Chief Executive Officer of Centrus. "By expanding our work to include innovative microreactor developers like Radiant, we are strengthening the US-based fuel supply network. This will help ensure that emerging nuclear technologies have access to the reliable fuel they need to reach commercialisation and meet growing demand for clean, secure, and dependable energy."

Rita Baranwal, Chief Nuclear Officer of Radiant, added: "You can't deploy nuclear reactors without fuel, so we have approached our fuel supply the same way we have approached the reactor: build it in parallel, and don't depend on any single path. This agreement gives Kaleidos a continued source of HALEU for commercial and national security applications and removes one of the biggest constraints facing advanced nuclear deployment. We're securing the fuel supply chain alongside the reactor so that when Kaleidos is ready to deploy at scale, the infrastructure behind it is ready too."

Kaleidos is a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor using TRISO fuel, helium gas coolant, and prismatic graphite blocks. The transportable microreactor will be fully contained in a single shipping container, and is designed to generate 3MW thermal or around 1MW electrical.