An interesting article on the production of HALEU - it would appear that currently the US$/Mwhr (with high TRISO/HALEU fuel costs) is not looking good in relationship to natural gas prices and GEN3+ large reactors: (IMHO we are being "prudent" in entering the NUF6 (from tails at an AISC of US$30/lb) (opportunity 1) and then the LEU (and LEU+ - opportunity 2) markets first and only the HALEU (opportunity 3) later (2030's)

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/smr-firms-race-build-nuclear-fuel-supply-chain-2025-03-31/

SMR firms race to build a nuclear fuel supply chain

By Mark Shenk

March 31, 202511:11 PM GMT+8Updated 3 days agoIndustry Insight from Reuters Events, a part of Thomson Reuters.

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) estimates the domestic demand for HALEU could reach 50 metric tons per year by 2035, with additional amounts required each year. However, Centrus Energy, currently the only U.S. maker of the fuel, aimed to produce 900 kilograms in 2024. The U.S. cannot import HALEU from Russia, the only global supplier of the fuel, because the Biden administration banned uranium imports, opens new tab

from Russia following t

CHART: U.S. uranium supply to commercial nuclear reactors (1950-2023)

Million pounds

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (January 2025) Purchase Licensing Rights

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The HALEU supply chain needs to grow rapidly in order to meet future demand from SMRs, which will typically need to refuel every five to seven years, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

To tackle the looming deficit, the DOE in October awarded a total of ten contracts with companies such as Westinghouse, BWXT, Framatome, GE Vernova, Urenco, Centrus, and Orano to provide enrichment services that will help establish and build out a U.S. supply of HALEU and low-enriched uranium (LEU), and for deconversion services.s comes after the U.S. announced00:0901:11

The 10-year contracts will each offer a minimum of $2 million, with up to $3.4 billion available from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The inflation act set aside some $700 million for the nuclear industry, with $500 million of that for HALEU production, $100 million to start a HALEU transportation system, and another $100 million for research, development, demonstration, and commercial use

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In addition, SMR companies have signed several deals and announced investments to secure a steady supply of HALEU.

The latest such agreement was signed by Sam Altman-backed Oklo, which in January announced a Memorandum of Understanding with advanced nuclear fuel company Lightbridge to co-locate their commercial fuel fabrication facilities. The partnership could potentially reduce capital expenditures and operating costs, the companies said, giving Oklo an advantage over rivals.
“I think we could significantly hold down the capital cost and the operating cost of deploying the commercial nuclear fuel fabrication facility than if we did it separately. There's so much we could share,” said Seth Grae, Lightbridge Corporation President and CEO.

While Oklo could potentially produce nuclear fuel for its Aurora reactor at the planned facility, Lightbridge is developing advanced metallic fuels for use in the existing fleet of light water reactors (LWRs) as well as SMRs using LWR technologies, such as those being developed by NuScale.

“There are a couple ways in which the things we're doing overlap,” Oklo's founder and CEO Jacob DeWitte told Reuters Events. “Why build two factories when you can do it with one,” DeWitte added.

Grae told Reuters Events that the companies have not yet decided on a location, but the plant could be built “near or adjacent to a government facility or a private sector facility that supplies something that we could use, or has security levels or trained personnel that could be shared.”

Oklo is building a test facility at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) that will produce nuclear fuel for Auora with used HALEU recovered from EBR-II, an experimental sodium-cooled fast reactor that was shut down in 1994.

The Oklo-Lightbridge facility should be around 100,000 square feet and “will probably be modular and scalable,” according to DeWitte.

“With the order book we already have, we can go back and finance against that,” he told Reuters Events.

Oklo has secured 14 GW in orders, including a non-binding agreement in December to supply data center company Switch for 12 GW from future Aurora reactors through 2044.

Competitive advantages

U.S. power demand from data centers is forecast to double within five years, rising from 176 TWh in 2023 to between 325 and 580 TWh in 2028, government data shows.

Big Tech companies, opens new tab

are teaming up with firms operating traditional water-cooled fission reactors, such as Constellation and Talen Energy, as well as SMR developers to secure a steady supply of nuclear power for their data centers.

Strategies to overcome cost hurdles for new nuclear - download our webinar.

Amazon is among a consortium investing $500 million in X-energy with the aim of installing 5 GW of SMR capacity in the U.S. by 2039. As a first step, Amazon and Energy Northwest will develop four SMRs with combined capacity of 320 MW in Washington State.

In October, Google signed an agreement with Kairos Power to develop 500 MW of SMRs close to data centers from 2030.

CHART: Forecast nuclear power construction starts by national origin of technology

Note: According to International Energy Agency's (IEA) Announced Pledges Scenario, 2017-2040. Source: IEA, January 2025. Purchase Licensing Rights

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Joshua Parker, director of business development for BWXT, said that the involvement of venture capital and publicly traded companies in the SMR field shows that the industry has momentum. However, he predicts that the commercial roll out of SMRs will probably not occur until the early 2030s because “it will take a lot of capital expense to build out a supply chain.”

DOE in April 2024 awarded a $148 million investment tax credit to help X-energy build a $300 million facility in Tennessee to produce the HALEU-based TRISO-X fuel, while Bill Gates-backed TerraPower plans to build a HALEU enrichment facility in South Africa.A TerraPower executive told Reuters Events

Meanwhile, BWXT is considering Wyoming as a potential site for a future facility that would produce TRISO fuel for the company’s BANR microreactor and Kairos Power in 2023 signed a memorandum of understanding with Urenco to collaborate on sourcing HALEU for its future fleet of SMRs.

Centrus Energy produces HALEU at its American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio through a demonstration program supported by the DOE, which then provides the HALEU to advanced nuclear reactors developers through the HALEU Availability Program.

Zach Koshgarian, an analyst at the Nuclear Innovation Alliance said that this program should provide most SMR developers seeking deployment by the end of the decade with the HALEU they need for their first few loads but “HALEU fuel supply for subsequent reactors is very low.”

"DOE needs to successfully implement their HALEU Availability Program and swiftly issue additional task orders to awardees to ensure there isn't a bottle neck created by the lack of HALEU supply," Koshgarian told Reuters Events.

Centrus in 2023 said that it could potentially boost production capacity at its Ohio plant to six tons a year in 42 months.

“We are producing HALEU today in modest quantities, but with sufficient funding, we can scale up to meet the HALEU requirements of Oklo, Lightbridge and other advanced nuclear companies,” Dan Leistikow, the vice president of corporate communications for Centrus told Reuters Events.