The Sapporo Five group of nations must each contribute their “strongest offerings” to an allied nuclear fuel cycle in a bid to ensure they can compete with the state-offerings of Russia and China, according to the heads of two industry leaders.

Daniel Poneman, former president and chief executive officer of US nuclear fuel company Centrus Energy, and Joshua Gray, president of Lightbridge, also a US-based advanced nuclear fuel technology company, argued in an article posted online by the American Nuclear Society that no single nation could offer the full suite of fuel cycle capabilities from mining to conversion enrichment, fabrication, and deconversion and metallisation steps.

But they said the Sapporo Five, an international nuclear energy alliance of the US, Japan, France, the UK and Canada launched in2023, would be capable of building a nuclear fuel supply chain by each contributing its “strongest offerings”.