Urenco USA gets OK to enrich uranium up to 10 percent

October 2, 2025, 9:35AMNuclear News
Urenco USA staff outside the Eunice, N.M., enrichment facility. (Photo: Urenco)

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has authorized Urenco USA to enrich uranium up to 10 percent U-235 following changes to plant systems and procedures and an operational readiness review. The company announced the news today, two days after the NRC issued its authorization on September 30 and said that all existing and future cascades at its Eunice, N.M., enrichment facility will be licensed to produce both low-enriched uranium, typically enriched to 5 percent fissile U-235, and LEU+, between 5 and 10 percent U-235.

Four companies picked for fast-tracked fuel fabrication

October 1, 2025, 9:30AMNuclear News

The Department of Energy has fast-tracked its selections for the Fuel Line Pilot Program. Four companies—Oklo, Terrestrial Energy, TRISO-X, and Valar Atomics—were named September 30 as “conditional selections” for a “fast-track approach to commercial licensing,” bringing the total to five. The first company conditionally chosen for a DOE-authorized fuel fabrication facility—Standard Nuclear—was named less than three weeks after the program opened to applicants in July.

Centrus says Ohio stands to gain 300 jobs as enrichers await federal contracts

September 26, 2025, 7:01AMNuclear News
Centrus employees maneuver a cylinder at the American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio. (Photo: Centrus Energy)

Centrus Energy announced a plan yesterday to add 300 new jobs at Centrus’s uranium enrichment plant in Piketon, Ohio, “in advance of federal funding decisions.” The company envisions adding capacity for both low-enriched uranium and high-assay low-enriched uranium production at its American Centrifuge Plant, but the “size and scope” of public and private investment is “subject to being selected for funding by the U.S. Department of Energy.”

NNSA awards BWXT $1.5B defense fuels contract

September 17, 2025, 3:00PMNuclear News
BWXT’s Centrifuge Manufacturing Development Facility, currently under construction in Oak Ridge, Tenn., will provide the centrifuges that will be used at the future DUECE pilot plant. (Photo: BWXT)

The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration has awarded BWX Technologies a contract valued at $1.5 billion to build a Domestic Uranium Enrichment Centrifuge Experiment (DUECE) pilot plant in Tennessee in support of the administration’s efforts to build out a domestic supply of unobligated enriched uranium for defense-related nuclear fuel.

U.S. nuclear fuel recycling takes two steps forward

September 8, 2025, 7:00AMRadwaste Solutions
Oklo’s proposed Advanced Fuel Center in Tennessee. (Image: Oklo)

Late last week saw two announcements from companies working to recycle used nuclear fuel on a commercial scale, providing welcome news to anyone hoping to see the United States move to unlock the hidden potential of the more than 94,000 metric tons of spent fuel stored at power plant sites around the country.

Kairos Power and BWXT team up on TRISO

September 3, 2025, 12:01PMNuclear News
Kairos Power’s fluoride salt–cooled high-temperature Reactor (KP-FHR) uses TRISO fuel embedded in annular graphite pebbles roughly the size of a golf ball. (Photo: Kairos Power)

Kairos Power and BWX Technologies announced today that they will work together to “collaboratively explore” optimizing commercial production of TRISO fuel for Kairos’s planned advanced reactor fleet—beginning with the 50-MWe Hermes 2, slated for operation in 2030—and other potential customers. Their collaboration could include jointly developing a TRISO fuel fabrication facility.

DOE allocates HALEU to Antares, Standard Nuclear, and ACU/Natura

August 27, 2025, 12:00PMNuclear News

The Department of Energy made conditional commitments yesterday to provide high-assay low-enriched uranium to three companies: reactor developer Antares Nuclear; fuel fabricator Standard Nuclear; and Natura Resources, which is backing Abilene Christian University’s development of a small Molten Salt Research Reactor and pursuing a commercial reactor design of its own. Following a contracting process, some of the companies “could receive their HALEU later this year.”

DOE-NE’s newest fuel consortium includes defense from antitrust laws

August 26, 2025, 3:23PMNuclear News

The Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy is setting up a nuclear fuel Defense Production Act Consortium that will seek voluntary agreements with interested companies “to increase fuel availability, provide more access to reliable power, and end America’s reliance on foreign sources of enriched uranium and critical materials needed to power the nation’s nuclear renaissance.” According to an August 22 DOE press release, the plan invokes the Defense Production Act (DPA) to give consortium members “defense from antitrust laws when certain criteria are met” and “allow industry consultation to develop plans of action.” DOE-NE is looking for interested companies to join the consortium ahead of its first meeting, scheduled for October 14.

NRC, DOE to hold webinar on HALEU fuel cycle

August 22, 2025, 7:01AMNuclear News

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy will hold a webinar on August 27 from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. (EDT) to discuss commercial-scale facility and transportation criticality analyses for the high-assay low-enriched uranium fuel cycle.

Those interested in attending the workshop can register using this link.

High-burnup fuel rods arrive at PNNL for testing

August 14, 2025, 12:00PMNuclear News
Fuel rods were delivered to PNNL in late June 2025 in a 30-ton canister. (Photo: Andrea Starr/PNNL)

Eleven high-burnup fuel rods manufactured by Global Nuclear Fuel have been delivered to Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for a battery of destructive tests. PNNL’s evaluation will provide GNF and the Department of Energy with information about the performance of the fuel, which—like other fuels developed through the DOE’s Accident Tolerant Fuel program— was engineered to handle longer operating cycles, improve fuel cycle economics, and support power uprates for existing light water reactors.

General Matter to build Kentucky enrichment plant under DOE lease

August 6, 2025, 12:00PMNuclear News
Uranium hexafluoride cylinders stand in a cylinder yard at the Paducah site. (Photo: DOE)

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management announced it has signed a lease with General Matter for the reuse of a 100-acre parcel of federal land at the former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky for a new private-sector domestic uranium enrichment facility.

Savannah River Site could produce 3.1 MT of HALEU as downblending plan okayed

July 24, 2025, 12:00PMNuclear News
H Canyon under construction in the early 1950s (left) and in 2010. (Photos: Savannah River Site)

From 2003 to 2011, staff at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site downblended high-enriched uranium in the site’s H Canyon, producing over 300 metric tons (MT) of low-enriched uranium that was fabricated into fuel. The facility has since been idled, but downblending could soon begin again—this time to high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU).

Test reactor fuel fabrication will be fast-tracked by DOE under new pilot program

July 21, 2025, 12:12PMNuclear News

The Department of Energy has announced a program to accelerate nuclear fuel fabrication for new test reactors. The Fuel Line Pilot Program would see the DOE approve facilities developed by U.S. companies to produce the fuel needed for test reactors the DOE expects to authorize under the Reactor Pilot Program announced in June. Like the reactors they’re meant to fuel, the fabrication facilities would be built on sites outside the DOE’s national laboratories but authorized by the DOE under “a fast-tracked approach to enable future commercial licensing activities for potential applicants.”

Joint NEA project performs high-burnup test

July 14, 2025, 3:00PMANS Nuclear Cafe
A commercially irradiated, refabricated test rod in an INL hot cell. (Photo: INL)

An article in the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency’s July news bulletin noted that a first test has been completed for the High Burnup Experiments in Reactivity Initiated Accident (HERA) project. The project aim is to understand the performance of light water reactor fuel at high burnup under reactivity-initiated accidents (RIA).

The value of recycled U and Pu brings Standard Nuclear and Shine together

July 9, 2025, 3:00PMNuclear News

Shine Technologies has been developing fusion-adjacent technologies in Janesville, Wis., including nuclear fuel recycling, since its founding in 2005. Standard Nuclear of Oak Ridge, Tenn., was formed just last year but holds a TRISO fuel production technology backed by years of research and development since it acquired Ultra Safe Nuclear’s fuel manufacturing assets after that company’s bankruptcy in October 2024. Now, Shine and Standard Nuclear have announced plans to work together on a “strategic partnership to advance nuclear fuel recycling and U.S. fuel security.”

DOE extends Centrus’s HALEU production contract by one year

June 25, 2025, 7:00AMNuclear News
A view of the HALEU cascade at the American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio. (Photo: Centrus Energy)

Centrus Energy has secured a contract extension from the Department of Energy to continue—for one year—its ongoing high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) production at the American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio, at an annual rate of 900 kilograms of HALEU UF6. That's the same amount of HALEU—900 kg—that the company today announced it has delivered to the DOE, completing Phase II of its contract. According to Centrus, the contract extension, which allows the company to begin Phase III, is valued at about $110 million through June 30, 2026.

Filling technical gaps and fueling the advancing nuclear supply chain at SRNL

May 29, 2025, 7:00AMNuclear NewsCatelyn Folkert
Solidified reaction mixtures removed from the alumina crucibles after a chlorination technique experiment. (Photo: Bryan Foley /SRNL)

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.

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TerraPower and ASP Isotopes agree on loan and HALEU supply terms

May 22, 2025, 6:58AMNuclear News

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 feeds UF6 into new U.S. commercial enrichment cascade

May 20, 2025, 12:00PMNuclear News
Urenco staff at the facility in Eunice, N.M. (Photo: Urenco)

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.

EPA, Wyoming approve future expansion of Ur-Energy’s Lost Creek mine

May 12, 2025, 12:00PMNuclear News
In situ uranium processing equipment at Lost Creek. (Photo: Ur-Energy)

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.”