US enrichment funding recipients flesh out plans

The Department of Energy (DOE) announced on 5 January that it had awarded task orders totalling USD2.7 billion to three companies to provide enrichment services for low-enriched uranium (LEU) and high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), to transition the USA away from foreign sources of uranium and diversify its domestic fuel supply. General Matter, American Centrifuge Operating and Orano Federal Services were each awarded USD900 million of funding to provide uranium enrichment services, with a separate award of USD28 million going to Global Laser Enrichment to continue advancing next-generation uranium enrichment technology.

Centrus, parent company of American Centrifuge Operating, said it intends to leverage the competitively-awarded funding to support its previously announced multi-billion dollar expansion in Piketon, Ohio, which - as well as producing HALEU - will also include additional LEU production to serve commercial utilities and the existing reactor fleet. The project is expected to support 1000 construction jobs and 300 new operating jobs in Ohio, as well as retaining 150 existing jobs at the Piketon plant, creating hundreds of new direct jobs at the company's centrifuge manufacturing plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and thousands of indirect jobs in Ohio, Tennessee and elsewhere.

The company acknowledged long-term support from Ohio and Tennessee leaders and bipartisan support for a 2024 funding package that had made the award possible.

Centrus is already producing HALEU under contract with the DOE - a cascade of AC-100M advanced centrifuges constructed to demonstrate HALEU production under a 2019 contract with the DOE became operational in 2023. The company intends to build additional centrifuge cascades to expand its HALEU production capacity, produce LEU feed material for the HALEU cascades, produce additional quantities of LEU to serve the commercial market, and service national security needs.

The USD900 million fixed-price base task order amount for the award is to bring new enrichment capacity online, but the award also includes options, at the Department's discretion, for up to USD170 million to produce and deliver HALEU to the DOE. This brings the total task order contract value with all options included to USD1.07 billion, Centrus said.

"This award represents a historic commitment to revitalising America's nuclear fuel supply chain and reclaiming American nuclear leadership on the global stage," said Centrus President and CEO Amir Vexler, adding that the award "will catalyse additional private investment and supports the prospect of further expansion as the market continues to grow".

Project IKE

Orano Federal Services, a business unit of Orano USA - part of the global Orano group - provides nuclear fuel cycle technologies and environmental management services to the US federal government. In September 2024, together with the State of Tennessee, Orano announced the selection of Oak Ridge as its preferred site to construct a multi-billion-dollar centrifuge uranium enrichment facility called Project IKE. The facility is on track for licence submission to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission early this year, with production of low-enriched uranium slated to begin in 2031, the company said.

CEO of Orano USA Jean-Luc Palayer said the company, which completed the Georges Besse II commercial centrifuge enrichment plant in France in 2011, was "honoured" to be identified as a key driver for US energy security: "Orano's Project IKE facility is designed to generate a secure and significant American-based supply of enriched uranium. For Orano, there is no mystery to making enriched uranium - and a lot of it - when you have reliable centrifuges, existing transport containers, and enrichment processes refined over decades of successful commercial operations."

Next-generation technology

Wilmington, North Carolina-based Global Laser Enrichment (GLE) was not selected for one of the USD900 million awards, but the Department of Energy announced a separate award to the company of up to USD28.5 million to advance next-generation uranium enrichment technology.

"GLE remains committed to its mission of supporting a secure, domestic nuclear fuel cycle and is actively pursuing next steps to advance the planned Paducah Laser Enrichment Facility (PLEF) and commercial deployment of its laser enrichment technology," the company said.

It intends to re-enrich high-assay depleted uranium tails acquired from the Department of Energy at the PLEF facility at Paducah, Kentucky. This would generate up to 2,000 tonnes of uranium hexafluoride (containing up to 5 million pounds of uranium) annually for more than three decades which the company says would be "enough domestic supply to fuel nearly 10% of current US reactor demand", and representing a nearly tenfold increase in domestic natural uranium output, "significantly enhance national energy security and fuel independence".