Urenco progresses on expansion, partners with Aalo

In addition, Aalo Atomics has announced that it signed a contract in July to be supplied uranium by UUSA no later than the first quart of 2026 for its Aalo-X project.

The facility: UUSA’s multiphase expansion plan, first announced in 2023, will eventually result in a 15 percent capacity increase at its enrichment facility. At the time, UUSA laid out a road map that saw the first new cascades coming on line in 2025—a timeline they have kept to.

This cascade is the second to enter production this year; the first new cascade started in May. UUSA currently predicts that the expansion will be completed in 2027, when 700,000 separative work units (SWUs) of new capacity have been added.

As the only commercial producer of enriched uranium operating in the United States, UUSA currently has the capacity to meet about one-third of the U.S. commercial nuclear power sector’s enrichment needs. However, the company aims to increase its supply as projections for demand continue to increase.

“With the current expansion campaign, our projects and operations teams are demonstrating their ability to build, install, and start up new cascades on a regular schedule, proving we are capable of growing to meet new demand as it arises,” John Kirkpatrick, managing director for UUSA, said on September 10.

Aalo details: Part of that new demand comes from Aalo Atomics, which Urenco is supplying with low enriched uranium enriched to 5 percent U-235 no later than the first quarter of 2026. Aalo will use this LEU for the 50-MWe Aalo-X reactor it is building as part of the Department of Energy’s recently created Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program.

Aalo broke ground on the Aalo-X site (which is at Idaho National Laboratory, adjacent to the Material and Fuels Complex) on September 3. The company is working to reach a July 4 criticality deadline established by the pilot program.

Aalo plans to manufacture the Aalo-X at its recently unveiled 40,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in Austin, Texas. It also plans to use the project as a precursor to the eventual commercial deployment of the Aalo Pod, which the company pitches as being “purpose-built for data centers.”