Ensuring energy resilience for our nation is on the minds of leaders and citizens alike. Advances in nuclear power technologies are increasing needs within the nuclear industry supply chain. Savannah River National Laboratory’s decades of experience in nuclear materials processing makes the lab uniquely qualified to meet the current and future challenges of the nuclear fuel cycle.

ASP Isotopes Inc. announced on May 19 that it now has conditional commitments from TerraPower for a loan that could partially finance a new uranium enrichment facility in South Africa. The companies have also reached a supply agreement for high-assay low-enriched uranium from the proposed facility that, according to ASP, “supports the supply of HALEU for the first fuel core for TerraPower’s Natrium Plant in Wyoming and contemplates the supply of HALEU over a 10-year period.”

Urenco USA has initiated production of enriched uranium in its newest gas centrifuge enrichment cascade—the first in a planned expansion of its Eunice, N.M., facility announced in July 2023. When the expansion is complete, early in 2027, the site will have increased its capacity by about 15 percent, adding about 700,000 separative work units (SWU) per year, the company said May 19.

Ur-Energy Inc. has secured approval from the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality’s Land Quality Division to construct and operate up to six additional mine units at its Lost Creek in situ uranium mine in south-central Wyoming. With that late April approval in hand, “we await only final concurrence and approval of the related aquifer exemption from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,” the company said. That approval was granted just three days later, on May 1, but Ur-Energy doesn’t plan to expand Lost Creek for “several years.”

Global Laser Enrichment has commenced uranium enrichment demonstration testing at its test loop pilot facility at the company’s headquarters in Wilmington, N.C. The technology readiness level-6 testing program is expected to be a pivotal validation of large-scale enrichment performance under operationally relevant conditions, according to the company.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Nuclear Plasma and Radiation Engineering (NPRE) Department announced yesterday that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved a fuel qualification methodology topical report for the high-temperature gas-cooled reactor the university wants to construct. The topical report was prepared by Ultra Safe Nuclear and submitted by UIUC to the NRC in March 2024. It describes the fuel that would be used in the microreactor that UIUC plans to host—initially containing uranium enriched to 9.9 percent U-235—and how it would be tested. The NRC issued its approval and a final safety evaluation on April 1.

Framatome announced that it has inaugurated a new workshop dedicated to the fabrication of fuel for research reactors and targets for medical isotopes at the company’s Romans-sur-Isère site in France. The workshops are part of Framatome’s CERCA division, which manufactures fuel and irradiation targets for research reactors.

BWX Technologies Inc. has purchased about 97 acres of land in an Oak Ridge, Tenn., industrial park where the company expects to build a uranium enrichment facility using a technology called DUECE, or, Domestic Uranium Enrichment Centrifuge Experiment. DUECE was developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to provide enriched uranium for the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, and BWXT is several months into a yearlong engineering study to evaluate options for deploying a centrifuge pilot plant using DUECE.

Servis

Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory are investigating a used nuclear fuel recycling technology that could lead to a scaled-down and more efficient approach to metal recovery, according to a recent news article from the lab. The research, led by Argonne radiochemist Anna Servis with funding from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E), could have an impact beyond the nuclear fuel cycle and improve other high-value metal processing, such as rare earth recovery, according to Argonne.

The research: Servis’s work is being carried out under ARPA-E’s CURIE (Converting UNF Radioisotopes Into Energy) program. The specific project—Radioisotope Capture Intensification Using Rotating Packed Bed Contactors—started in 2023 and is scheduled to end in January 2026.

U.S. uranium production increased throughout 2024, with more growth planned in 2025. The producers who can make that happen, however, were burned before by a “renaissance” that didn’t take off. Now they are watching and waiting for signals from Washington, D.C., including the impacts of tariffs, shifting relationships with global uranium producers, and funding for the enrichment task orders designed to boost demand for U.S. uranium.

Idaho National Laboratory recently conducted a safety test on high-burnup fast reactor fuel from historic irradiation testing at the lab’s Experimental Breeder Reactor-II (EBR-II). According to the Department of Energy, which announced the work March 12, it’s the first such safety test to be performed in over 20 years.

General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS) has announced that it has subjected nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) fuel samples to several “high-impact” tests at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Ala. That news comes as NASA, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, and multiple nuclear and space technology companies continue to build on recent progress in nuclear thermal rocket design and demonstration.

The Department of Energy has offered up to $80 million of Inflation Reduction Act funding to back potential advancements in high-assay low-enriched uranium production. The new funding opportunity, announced in December, will prioritize technological advancement developing innovative technologies and approaches to strengthen the front-end of the HALEU supply chain. Applications are due by 5:00 p.m. (EST) on February 26, 2025.

Just one day after Urenco USA (UUSA) was picked by the Department of Energy as one of six contractors eligible to compete for future low-enriched uranium task orders, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on December 11 formally approved the company’s license amendment request to boost uranium enrichment levels at its Eunice, N.M., enrichment facility to 10 percent fissile uranium-235—up from its current limit of 5.5 percent.

General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS) announced last week that unfueled test rods featuring the company’s SiGA fuel cladding—made of a silicon carbide composite material—successfully survived 120 days of irradiation in the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) at Idaho National Laboratory.

Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers have performed a critical experiment using high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) TRISO fuel. It is the nation’s first criticality safety experiment using HALEU fuel in more than 20 years. On November 21, LANL announced the work of its Deimos team, which earlier this year carried out an experiment at the National Criticality Experiments Research Center (NCERC), operated by LANL at the Nevada National Security Site.

The Department of Energy announced November 19 that up to $16 million is available through a new High-Assay Low-Enrichment Transportation Package funding opportunity to research, develop, and acquire Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing for transportation of HALEU—using new or modified packages.

Clean Core Thorium Energy (Clean Core) announced November 12 that test rodlets of its patented thorium-uranium fuel design known as ANEEL (advanced nuclear energy for enriched life) have reached a burnup milestone in the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) at Idaho National Laboratory.

TerraPower announced today that it has signed a term sheet with ASP Isotopes Inc. as the first step of a planned investment in the construction of a high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) enrichment facility and the eventual purchase of HALEU produced at the facility to fuel its Natrium fast reactors.

If we needed more proof that this is a “nuclear week”—in the words of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on Wednesday, as she announced small modular reactor funding while celebrating tech company investments in advanced reactors—the Department of Energy came through late yesterday when, just nine days after announcing six contracts for high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) deconversion, it announced four contracts for HALEU enrichment services worth up to $2.7 billion. Those contracts are going to Centrus Energy’s American Centrifuge Operating subsidiary, General Matter, Orano Federal Services, and Urenco USA’s Louisiana Energy Services.