The Department of Energy is set to announce at least $900 million to boost uranium enrichment in the U.S. nuclear power sector, several sources close to the discussion told POLITICO’s E&E News.
The funding comes as the U.S. prepares to cut off imports of uranium from Russia in 2028. But experts fear the funding will not go far enough.
Major obstacles stand in the way to domestically enrich the uranium that’s needed to power the 94 large reactors in the U.S. today, which provide roughly a fifth of electricity on the grid.
Still, the funding, which is viewed as seed money for an enrichment revival in the U.S., could come as soon as the end of this month — and may be offered to multiple companies.
“This will be a $900 million opportunity going to one, maybe two companies,” Nima Ashkeboussi, vice president for government relations and communications at the firm Global Laser Enrichment, said in an interview. “DOE is using this money as essentially a grant to the awardee to incentivize them to accelerate and maximize capacity deployment.”
Two other sources who were granted anonymity to speak freely about sensitive federal funding confirmed the funding could go to multiple companies and could come as early as next week. The funding, according to the sources, is for the low-enriched uranium used in traditional reactors, not the next-generation fuel needed for a new wave of small reactors that are currently seeking regulatory approval.
The funding, which stems from a program put in place last year by the Biden administration, would mark a major escalation in federal efforts to boost domestic enrichment and the broad nuclear sector in the U.S., just as the World Nuclear Association said in a recent report that global uranium demand will nearly double by 2040.
“The DOE’s money is like a sourdough bread starter,” said Curtis Roberts II, vice president of communications for Orano USA, a subsidiary of a French government-owned enricher. “We can’t stand up a market without it, really.”
Since taking office, President Donald Trump has raised the ante on nuclear power, pledging to quadruple it by midcentury to “win the AI race” and meet skyrocketing electricity demand forecasts for the coming years. Trump has released several executive orders on nuclear energy since taking power, and in May he called for “10 new large reactors with complete designs under construction by 2030.”
Energy Secretary Chris Wright has said nuclear power is the “single biggest issue” on his agenda. Wright and other nuclear supporters say the electricity source is a critical way to operate artificial intelligence projects across the country with baseload power, a term typically used to describe nuclear and fossil fuels for their ability to provide around-the-clock electricity.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is working with Constellation Energy to restart a reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, the site of a meltdown at a different reactor in 1979. And the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office is financing a loan for Holtec International to restart the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan.
Speaking at an Atlantic Council event Wednesday, Julie Kozeracki, director of strategy at the LPO, said the office “will be doing financing for nuclear.”
Large reactors back in vogue
U.S. policymaking on nuclear power in recent years often focused on the development of small modular reactors, and companies are actively seeking approvals and permits for small reactor construction and operation. But SMRs don’t currently provide any electricity to the grid, and some policymakers have recently prioritized construction of large, traditional reactors that use low-enriched uranium, or LEU.
“I think you’ve seen a sea change in the last 18 months to a year,” said Andrew Shaw, a lobbyist with Bracewell LLP. “Prior to that, everybody was talking about SMRs, but now, with this significant load growth projected, there’s a lot of new interest in AP1000s.”
AP1000s are the newest large reactors built by Westinghouse. The most recent U.S. example is the Vogtle plant in Georgia.
Global Laser Enrichment, or GLE, and Orano are two of six companies selected by DOE in December last year to “compete for future work to supply” LEU. That’s the nuclear fuel used today in large U.S. reactors. LEU differs from the next-generation fuel eyed for small reactors, which is typically referred to as high-assay, low-enriched uranium, or HALEU.
“There’s a defined market right now for LEU, whereas future demand when it comes to HALEU is pretty uncertain,” Shaw said. “You just don’t know how many of these reactors are actually going to go forward and how many will not.”
The other companies selected are a Centrus Energy subsidiary; Urenco; LIS Technologies; and General Matter, a new firm backed by conservative financier Peter Thiel and run by former SpaceX employee Scott Nolan, who attended a White House event on nuclear earlier this year. DOE signed a lease with General Matter in August that allows the company to use a former enrichment site in Paducah, Kentucky, along with the uranium at the location.
While the U.S. currently imports roughly an eighth to a quarter of its enriched uranium from Russia, a law passed last year by Congress requires the U.S. to cut off Russian imports by 2028. The law is part of a U.S. push to penalize Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
“We allowed ourselves to fall under dependence of both China and Russia for critical minerals,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Sunday, according to a White House pool report. “America buying uranium from Russia is not acceptable and so we’re working very hard … to make sure we’ve got a plan so that the United States can get back into domestic enriched uranium production as quickly as possible.”
Domestic enrichment ‘as quickly as possible’
The Trump administration nuclear strategy has come with controversy. A Trump official has pushed the independent Nuclear Regulatory Commission to “rubber-stamp” new reactors tested by DOE and the Defense Department.
Meanwhile, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) has spelled out concerns that federal programs will benefit Oklo, a nuclear company with a board of directors that featured Wright before his resignation in February. Oklo is on a rapid rise, although some industry experts think its stock value is wildly inflated.
DOE did not respond to an E&E News request for comment.
Dan Leistikow, vice president of corporate communications at Centrus, said the U.S. needs to step up on enrichment.
“Centrus offers the only proven, American-made enrichment technology,” Leistikow said. “We will introduce new supply diversity and price competition to a dangerously over-concentrated market.”
While Centrus doesn’t produce LEU in the U.S., it is the only company currently producing HALEU domestically, having already secured a contract with DOE.
The company announced on Thursday plans for a significant expansion of its HALEU enrichment plant in Ohio. This project could create 1,300 jobs, Centrus says, and requires billions in private and public investment, along with federal funding decisions.
But the U.S. offices of Orano and Urenco — jointly owned by the British and Dutch governments and two German utilities — are looking to get into the game too. Urenco operates America’s only commercial-scale enrichment facility in New Mexico, and Orano has announced plans to construct a plant in Tennessee that would be the state’s largest single investment ever.
“One of [President Trump’s] goals is to bring in foreign investment,” Roberts with Orano said. “Our Project IKE is a $5 billion development with the DOE support, and so with our proposal, that money is spent here in the U.S. — all of it.”
Lee Robinson, founding member of General Matter, said U.S. nuclear plants may run into “shortage territory” on enriched uranium supply in the coming years.
“The supply of that feedstock was previously, in part, coming from Russia,” he said Wednesday at the Atlantic Council event. “The U.S. market needs to catch up to that. Otherwise, they’re not going to have options.”
The DOE announcement on the Kentucky lease awarded to General Matter says enrichment activities will launch “by the end of the decade.” General Matter did not respond to a request for comment.
Jay Yu, chief executive officer at LIS Technologies, says his company is helping to pioneer cutting-edge laser enrichment technologies that could dramatically cut costs over current gas centrifuge technology.
“There’s no company in the world or country that has successfully scaled laser uranium enrichment,” he said in an interview. “We’re going to focus on where the market is, so probably LEU.”
Yu said the approaching cutoff of Russia uranium is a “boost” to U.S. enrichers. In the last year, he said his company raised more than $45 million in capital. Meanwhile, GLE’s Ashkeboussi said staff at his company is at 115 people, up dramatically from a dozen in 2021.
Russian cutoff challenges
But even with the DOE funding for new enrichment, experts say the 2028 Russian uranium cutoff may be too challenging to meet.
Roberts with Orano said every month counts as developers prepare to deploy dozens of advanced reactors over the next decade.
“It takes a certain amount of time to license it, to build a facility to hit that,” he said. “Advanced reactors actually are going to be coming online [in the] 2028 or so time frame. So if we want to license and build, ramp up facility production, the timing is now.”
And each of the contract competitors is subject to criticism from others in the nuclear sphere. GLE, LIS Technologies and General Matter are comparative newcomers brandishing commercially unproven technology.
Many blame Centrus for America’s dearth of enrichment capacity, noting that the company hasn’t commercially enriched uranium in more than a decade despite significant government support.
Orano’s chief executive in Paris said the company will not make a financial investment decision on Project IKE until 2027.
Urenco’s New Mexico enrichment facility, the lone commercial one in the U.S., recently expanded and is able to supply about a third of enriched uranium used in the U.S. But the company has seen production go down, not up, since 2018.
That’s a stark contrast from past decades. In 1985, government-operated enrichment plants processed more than six times the uranium the nation enriches today and nearly four times what American reactors consumed.
Many experts are concerned that atrophy in the U.S. nuclear sector paves the way for China to usurp American leadership globally. China currently has 32 reactors under construction and 44 more planned, according to the World Nuclear Association, and the country has exported enriched uranium to the U.S. in recent years.
“I’m quite concerned about the role that China may have in the global nuclear market and the implications of that for the United States,” said Paul Saunders, a Russia expert and president of the nonprofit Center for the National Interest. “China has a very substantial domestic reactor construction program underway.”
“It’s not a given that the United States stays ahead,” he said.
Correction: A previous version of this report misspelled Jay Yu’s name.
