Aim is to increase production of LEU, seen as vital to US energy security
Urenco USA announced today that it will expand the capacity of the United States’ only commercial uranium enrichment facility by nearly 50%, marking a major commitment to strengthening the US nuclear fuel supply chain as the country expands the use of nuclear power.
The company said the multi-billion-dollar investment will fund the construction of a new enrichment plant at its National Enrichment Facility, in Eunice, New Mexico, enabling the increased production of low-enriched uranium (LEU) vital to the nation’s energy security.
Urenco USA is a supplier of enrichment services and fuel cycle products and part of the Urenco Group, which is majority owned by the governments of the Netherlands and the UK with minority shares controlled by German electric utilities E.ON and RWE.
Urenco will install 2.1 million separative work units (SWU)* of new enrichment capacity using the company’s gas-centrifuge enrichment technology. During the expansion, up to 24 cascades of centrifuges will be installed, with the initial cascades starting production in 2032 and additional cascades installed through 2036.
LEU serves as the foundational fuel for the US’s existing operating fleet of commercial light-water reactors, which generate nearly 20% of the nation’s electricity.
LEU will also serve as essential feedstock to produce high-assay low enriched uranium (Haleu) in the future, which will be used in advanced reactor designs planned for deployment in the 2030s.
Since 2006, the company has invested more than $5bn (€4.2bn) of private capital in the Eunice facility to provide a secure domestic supply of enriched uranium. It says it is the only company to have licensed, built, operated and expanded a commercial uranium enrichment facility in the US.
The facility has an existing annual capacity of 4.3 million SWU, which is approximately one-third of current US demand, and has an expansion project to add 700,000 SWU of capacity that will be completed in 2027. Urenco USA also intends to refurbish existing capacity at the site starting in 2027 as part of capital investments in the facility. With these investments, installed capacity at the facility will grow to more than seven million SWU over the next decade.
The US capacity programme is part of a larger effort by Urenco Global to now install 4.6 million of new SWU enrichment capacity at sites in the US, the Netherlands, and Germany over the next decade.
* A separative work unit (SWU) is the standard measure of the effort required to separate uranium-235 (U-235) and uranium-238 (U-238). Both are isotopes of uranium, but they differ in the number of neutrons in their nuclei and have different properties and uses. U-235 is used as fuel in nuclear power plants, naval ships and submarines, and in nuclear weapons. U-235 must be separated from the more plentiful isotope U-238 for its various uses.
