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DOE awards $2.7B for HALEU and LEU enrichment
Yesterday, the Department of Energy announced that three enrichment services companies have been awarded task orders worth $900 million each. Those task orders were given to American Centrifuge Operating (a Centrus Energy subsidiary) and General Matter, both of which will develop domestic HALEU enrichment capacity, along with Orano Federal Services, which will build domestic LEU enrichment capacity.
The DOE also announced that it has awarded Global Laser Enrichment an additional $28 million to continue advancing next generation enrichment technology.
The background: In October 2024, the DOE announced that four companies would receive contracts allowing them to “bid on future work to produce and store HALEU in the form of uranium hexafluoride gas to eventually be made into fuel for advanced reactors.” At the time, DOE stated that $2.7 billion in contracts was available to “provide enrichment services to help establish a U.S. supply of high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU).”
Those four companies, along with two others, were also selected for a similar contracting structure in December 2024 for potential LEU awards.
More than a year later and now under a different administration, the scale and scope of these contracts appear largely unchanged. While the exact verbiage of the Biden-Harris–era announcement may vary marginally from yesterday’s, both highlight in their first paragraphs that these contracts create jobs, bolster the domestic supply chain, and reduce U.S. dependence on foreign suppliers.
Urenco left out: One key difference between the initial announcement and this update is that of the four initial companies selected for potential HALEU awards, Louisiana Energy Services (a subsidiary of Urenco USA) has not received a task order. The company is the only enricher currently operating commercially in the U.S. UUSA has been expanding its enrichment capacity in recent months and recently received Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval to enrich uranium up to 10 percent U-235.
UUSA is itself a subsidiary of U.K.-based Urenco Ltd—which is owned in equal thirds by the British, Dutch, and German governments. It is currently producing about one-third of the enriched uranium required to power U.S. commercial nuclear power plants.
General Matter project: While the DOE did not explicitly state what projects the new funding would support, the involved companies were quick to celebrate the news and add additional context. General Matter explained that its $900 million will accelerate its project at the former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. In August 2025, the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management signed a lease with the company for the reuse of a 100-acre parcel of federal land at the site for a new private-sector domestic uranium enrichment facility. That lease also provided General Matter with a minimum of 7,600 cylinders of existing depleted uranium hexafluoride to supply fuel for future reenrichment operations.
At the time, the company expected to begin construction on the new facility in 2026 and enter operation by 2034.
Orano project: Orano Federal Services (a subsidiary of Orano USA, which itself is a subsidiary of Paris-based Orano Group, majority owned by the French government) will be focusing its funding on Oak Ridge, Tenn., where the company is developing Project Ike, a $5 billion LEU enrichment facility named after President Eisenhower. In September 2024, the company announced the city as its preferred site for the planned facility.
As for a timetable, Orano said it is on track for NRC license submission in early 2026. If the plan holds, the facility will begin producing LEU in 2031. François Lurin, executive vice president of Orano's chemistry and enrichment business, added, “Orano is the only Western company in the last 15 years that has successfully built and operated a new, modern, commercial-scale gas centrifuge uranium enrichment facility with our completion of the Georges Besse II facility in 2011.”
Elsewhere, the company has said that the initial design of this facility will be similar in size to France’s Georges Besse II, which is 750,000 square feet.
Centrus project: American Centrifuge Operating parent company Centrus Energy announced that its share of DOE funding will support its enrichment facility in Piketon, Ohio.
Centrus announced in December 2025 that it had begun domestic centrifuge manufacturing to support commercial LEU enrichment activities at the facility.
The DOE funding will support the implementation of HALEU enrichment at the facility, aligning with Centrus’s preexisting plan to add capacity for both LEU and HALEU enrichment at the facility.
"I am grateful to the Trump administration for making this commitment and to Republicans and Democrats in Congress who came together to provide this urgently needed funding. This award will catalyze additional private investment and supports the prospect of further expansion as the market continues to grow,” said Amir Vexler, Centrus president and CEO.
GLE and LIS Technologies: Aside from the three major awards, the DOE also selected Global Laser Enrichment for a comparatively modest $28.5 million award. GLE was one of the two additional companies selected in December 2024 for a potential LEU award in addition to the original four companies selected for potential HALEU awards.
Another laser enrichment company—LIS Technologies—was the second company being considered for LEU but not HALEU. Like Urenco, it appears to have been left out of the group that received task orders yesterday.
Earlier today, GLE explained that its award remains subject to final contract negotiations. The company did not explicitly state what it plans to use the new funding for but emphasized that it is “actively pursuing next steps to advance the planned Paducah Laser Enrichment Facility and commercial deployment of its laser enrichment technology.”
