DOE awards USD2.7 billion to strengthen US uranium enrichment

The "historic" investment expands US capacity for low-enriched uranium (LEU) and jumpstarts new supply chains and innovations for high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), the Department of Energy (DOE) said.

The department had previously signed contracts with a total of six companies allowing them to bid on future LEU and HALEU enrichment work. It has now selected Centrus subsidiary American Centrifuge Operating and startup General Matter to receive ten-year task orders to create domestic HALEU enrichment capacity; and Orano Federal Services to expand US domestic LEU enrichment capacity.

The newly announced task order awards "will transition the United States away from foreign sources of uranium and diversify the nation’s domestic fuel supply", it said.

Orano said the decision was a key milestone to accelerate development of its USD5 billion project to build a new enrichment facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, known as Project IKE. CEO Nicolas Maes said the DOE decision "identifies Orano as a proven nuclear fuel supplier", adding that the company anticipates "delivering production" from the new facility "at the beginning of the next decade".

General Matter was one of four companies selected in October 2024 by the DOE to provide enrichment services to help establish a US supply of HALEU. The company did not emerge from stealth until April 2025, and in August signed a lease with the DOE for the reuse of federal land at the former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky for a new commercial uranium enrichment facility.

The new decade-long, milestone-based contract "accelerates that plan and will make Paducah, Kentucky the cornerstone of the US enrichment once again", the company said. "In Paducah we will enrich HALEU to fuel clean, safe, baseload power, enabling American leadership in AI, manufacturing, and other critical industries."

Unenriched, or natural, uranium contains about 0.7% of fissile uranium-235 (U-235), the isotope of uranium that is capable of undergoing the fission process by which energy is produced in a nuclear reactor. Enrichment increases the concentration of the fissile isotope, typically by passing gaseous uranium hexafluoride through gas centrifuges.

Most nuclear reactors need fuel containing between 3.5% and 5% U-235, which is known as LEU. The fuel that will be needed by the advanced reactor designs that are now being developed - and many small modular reactors - requires still higher enrichments. Fuel with enrichment levels of 5-10% U-235 is known as LEU+; HALEU contains 10-20% U-235.

The USA has been dependent on uranium enrichment from overseas enterprises since the last domestically-owned commercial uranium enrichment capacity, the Paducah gaseous diffusion plant, closed in 2013. Since then, the Urenco USA plant at Eunice in New Mexico - a plant using a European centrifuge design manufactured in the Netherlands - has been the only commercial enrichment capacity in the USA.

Laser focus

Alongside the USD2.7 billion of funding, the DOE also announced the award of USD28 million award to Global Laser Enrichment (GLE) "to continue advancing next generation uranium enrichment technology for the nuclear fuel cycle". This is the result of a competitive solicitation issued last December, the DOE said.

GLE is the exclusive licensee of the SILEX laser enrichment technology invented by Australian company Silex Sytems Ltd. In October, the company announced that it had reached Technology Readiness Level 6 following the completion of its large-scale uranium enrichment demonstration programme, and also plans to deploy the technology commercially at Paducah. It completed its full licence application to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the Paducah Laser Enrichment Facility in July.