Fuel

This past January, Westinghouse Electric Company, Nordion, and PSEG Nuclear formalized agreements to implement newly developed cobalt-60 production technology at Units 1 and 2 of PSEG’s Salem nuclear power plant in New Jersey, with the Co-60 to be supplied to Nordion. Through an ongoing joint initiative, the companies aim to harness U.S. pressurized water reactors to produce a key medical isotope and build the first commercial-scale Co-60 production platform in the United States.

According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the amount of uranium concentrate produced in the United States in 2025 was more than three times greater than that produced the year before, and amounted to about 2.1 million pounds of U₃O₈, compared with the 657,000 pounds generated in 2024. It’s the largest amount produced in the United States since 2017.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has formed a strategic partnership with Ampera to develop the company’s nuclear fuel concept through a project named THUNDER, for Thorium Unimodal Droplet Ejection for Reactors.

The focus of THUNDER is fabricating TRISO made with kernels of thorium rather than the usual uranium. LLNL and Ampera will evaluate and optimize liquid metal–jetting technology to produce highly uniform, spherical kernels of thorium-232 for later processing into TRISO fuel.

The Government Accountability Office has released a report to Congress titled “Nuclear Fuel: Actions Needed to Enhance Cost Reporting and Economic Analysis for Federal Uranium Supply Efforts.” The report describes National Nuclear Security Administration estimates of enriched uranium supplies and demands, examines the NNSA’s plans to meet enriched uranium needs, and describes potential challenges to meeting supply goals. It also examines Department of Energy efforts to support the front-end fuel cycle for the commercial nuclear industry.

Last week in Chicago, the American Nuclear Society’s Fuel Cycle & Waste Management Division hosted Global 2026, where it was abundantly clear that there are many exciting fuel-related developments in the nuclear power industry. Developments announced last week run the gamut of the fuel cycle, including enrichment, fabrication, and recycling and reprocessing.

Used nuclear fuel storage and transportation have reached a critical juncture.

Dozens of utilities need reliable data on how used nuclear fuel performs in dry storage casks and canisters to extend regulatory licenses at sites across the United States. Likewise, the Department of Energy expects to take ownership of the used nuclear fuel—termed “spent nuclear fuel” in the laws and regulations governing its stewardship—and transfer it to one or more federal staging facilities for management and disposition.

Meanwhile, dozens of reactor companies are testing prototypes of advanced reactors and advanced reactor fuels. Eventually, regulators and industry must also verify the safety and security of storage methods for these advanced fuel types.

To help address these challenges, the DOE established the Center for Used Fuel Research (CUFR) in January 2026 for work related to the long-term storage and transport of used nuclear fuel.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is considering Orano Enrichment USA’s application for a license to build a centrifuge enrichment facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn. A notice published in the Federal Register on August 12 includes a commission order and an announcement of the opportunity to request a contested hearing.

The publication of the FR notice marked the start of a 60-day period in which a member of the public can file a request for a hearing. If contentions are adjudicated, the NRC intends to not hold a second, uncontested hearing before issuing a license on the $5 billion Project Ike Enrichment Facility, where Orano plans to reenrich depleted uranium hexafluoride (UF₆) tails and enrich natural-grade UF₆ to a maximum of 8-weight percent uranium-235.

First American Nuclear Co., developer of the 240-MWe EAGL-1 reactor, has announced its intention to make its own advanced reactor fuel. The Indianapolis-based company has filed a regulatory engagement plan with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the construction of a Category II high-assay low-enriched uranium deconversion and fuel fabrication facility, and the NRC has docketed the plan for consideration.

In an era where clean, reliable energy is more critical than ever, nuclear operators are under increasing pressure to optimize performance, reduce operational risk, and streamline complex workflows. Studsvik Scandpower, the leading independent provider of state-of-the-art nuclear fuel management software and world-class engineering services, is helping utilities meet these challenges head-on.

At the center of this innovation is MARLA, an advanced solution designed to simplify and optimize shuffle design, pool management, cask loading, and nuclear material tracking.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued an environmental assessment and finding of no significant impact to Disa Technologies for company’s use of its NRC-licensed high-pressure slurry ablation (HPSA) technology to remediate abandoned uranium mine (AUM) waste at the Mary Ann AUM waste pile site in Montrose County, Colo.

Disa Tech, a Wyoming-based mineral processing company, submitted a premobilization notification to the NRC in March to use its HPSA technology at the Mary Ann site. The NRC is considering approval of the PMN, which would officially allow HPSA operations to proceed.

Researchers at Idaho National Laboratory and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have conducted a three-dimensional study of irradiated U-10Zr—uranium alloyed with 10 percent zirconium—across key radial regions, providing new insights into how the material swells, transfers heat, and interacts with the fuel cladding.

U-10Zr was extensively tested in historical sodium-cooled fast reactors and is now attracting attention for use in next-generation advanced reactors.

The global nuclear revival, which is fueled by unprecedented demand for firm, affordable, dispatchable power for artificial intelligence and data center build-out, energy security imperatives, and climate commitments, has exposed a structural reality of the Western fuel cycle: No single allied nation currently possesses the full suite of front-end capabilities. From mining through conversion, enrichment, fabrication, and the emerging deconversion and metallization steps required for reactor fuels, capability is distributed across Canada, France, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States (collectively, the “Sapporo Five”), as well as a small group of close partners.

Centrus Energy Corp. will be providing X-energy with enrichment services for low-enriched uranium and high-assay, low-enriched uranium to support X-energy’s planned deployments of Xe-100 small modular reactors and TRISO-X fuel, according to the terms of a new contract signed by the companies. The fuel will be produced at Centrus’s American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio. In turn, X-energy will provide Centrus with prepayments to help support expanding the capacity of Centrus’s domestic commercial enrichment program.

The end-of-July spot price for uranium was $86.36 per pound, as reported by Cameco—roughly the same as it has been since February. Analytics firm Trading Economics reported a uranium futures price of $86.60 per pound, a figure that also has been holding steady since early April.

These updates come as the U.S. Energy Information Administration has released its 2025 Uranium Marketing Annual Report, which examines in detail multiple aspects of the U.S. uranium market. Data are derived from answers given in the Uranium Marketing Annual Survey, which collects information on contracts, deliveries (during the past year and projected for the next 10 years), purchased enrichment services, inventories, fuel assembly usage, and market requirements.

Last week, the Department of Energy announced a conditional commitment to provide high-assay low-enriched uranium to NASA for its Space Reactor-1 Freedom rocket and to Radiant Industries for its microreactor expected to be sited at Buckley Space Force Base.

The announcement comes a few weeks after Centrus Energy signed a contract to finalize the terms of a $900 million DOE task order to expand production capacity for HALEU at its American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio.

Nuclear fuel manufacturer Standard Nuclear is describing “construction and regulatory approval milestones” for two TRISO fuel production facilities that are both under construction. The company reports that construction is “substantially complete” for both the SN-TN (in Tennessee) and SN-ID (in Idaho) sites and that the Department of Energy has approved the preliminary documented safety analyses (PDSAs) for both facilities.

Standard Nuclear is participating in the DOE’s Fuel Line Pilot Program and Surplus Plutonium Utilization Program, and is also among the companies receiving HALEU from the DOE for use in their fuel production or reactor programs.

Last week, Austin, Texas–based nuclear fuel start-up SuperCritical Materials announced that it has secured a license from the Department of Energy for a patented uranium and critical materials adsorbent manufacturing process originally developed by a team led by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

SuperCritical aims to use this license to extract uranium from seawater at an industrial scale in the United States and abroad.

The Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) has signed a research agreement with Quantum Leap Energy (QLE) “to advance and de-risk the commercial production of high-purity uranium hexafluoride (UF₆).”

QLE is an Austin, Texas–based subsidiary of ASP Isotopes (ASPI), which is developing an isotope enrichment platform for applications in nuclear energy, nuclear medicine, and semiconductors. QLE specializes in the uranium conversion step of the nuclear fuel cycle—the conversion of yellowcake uranium concentrate (U₃O₈) into UF₆ prior to enrichment.

Expanding capabilities: As explained by QLE CEO Ryno Pretorius, “Today, the United States has only one operating commercial conversion facility, making the expansion of domestic conversion capabilities essential to strengthening our nation’s energy security and reducing reliance on foreign sources. By working alongside TEES, we are advancing technologies with the aim of improving production efficiency, lowering costs, and supporting the growing demand for nuclear fuel.”

About the partnership: In implementing the research agreement, TEES and QLE will collect physicochemical data on the reactions involved in producing UF₆ from yellowcake, with the objectives of improving production technology, reducing costs, and enhancing scalability. The data are expected lead to improvements in conversion efficiency for applications in nuclear energy, process design, modeling, scale-up activities, and production pathway optimization.

The Texas-based companies and TEES consider the new agreement important for their home state as well as the rest of the country. As noted by ASPI in its press release, “Securing access to materials and strengthening domestic supply chains has become increasingly important as nations pursue greater energy independence and accelerate the global energy transition. The partnership between QLE and TEES reinforces how industry-led collaboration is advancing the next generation of nuclear fuel capabilities and strengthens [Texas’s] position as a leader in advanced nuclear development.”

ASPI projects: ASPI, which is headquartered in Dallas, has developed proprietary separation and enrichment technologies for the production of isotopes for a range of industrial and advanced technology applications. The company also operates isotope enrichment facilities in Pretoria, South Africa.

ASPI and its QLE subsidiary have ongoing projects with a number of companies and institutions, including collaborations with Fermi America and Texas Tech University for uranium enrichment research, development, and production and with TerraPower regarding financing for a uranium enrichment facility in South Africa.

X-energy subsidiary TRISO-X has received an economic development grant valued at $11 million from Tennessee’s Nuclear Energy Supply Chain Investment Fund, which was established in 2023 to “support nuclear energy business investment, workforce development programs, and site development across Tennessee.” The grant will be used for the ongoing construction of TRISO-X’s fuel fabrication campus at the Horizon Center Industrial Park in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

Following up on an agreement that was signed 12 years ago, Australia and India have finalized the details by which Australian uranium will be exported to India for peaceful purposes and under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The Administrative Arrangement to enable the long-term exports was reached at the Third India–Australia Annual Summit, held in Melbourne on July 9. The summit coincided with a meeting between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.