A ground-breaking ceremony at Urenco USA’s (UUSA’s) National Enrichment Facility in Eunice, New Mexico, has kicked off a multi-billion-dollar strategic expansion which will add 2.1m separative work units (SWU) using advanced gas-centrifuge technology. This will boost site capability nearly 50% beyond its current 4.3m SWU. The ceremony was attended by Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, Urenco CEO Boris Schucht, and other company leadership.
Construction of the new plant will begin in 2029, with the initial centrifuge cascades entering production in 2032 and full installation running to 2036.Total Investment: This will increase the total private capital injection at the New Mexico site to substantially more than $8bn The expansion will support 300 to 600 jobs during peak construction and add 70 permanent roles to the current 500-person workforce.
The project represents the largest privately funded nuclear fuel investment in US history, executed entirely without public funding or government subsidies. The expanded production of low enriched uranium (LEU) is primarily driven by long-term contracts from domestic utilities seeking to secure their fuel supply ahead of the 2028 US ban on Russian uranium imports.
Because Urenco USA operates the only commercial-scale uranium enrichment plant in the country, this capacity addition is vital to filling the supply gap as the US scales up nuclear power generation. Separately, a smaller, pre-existing 700,000 SWU upgrade at the site remains on track for completion in 2027.
“We’re making this substantial commitment to expand our U.S. facility to serve our US customers’ needs. But this expansion also supports the Department of Energy’s goals to accelerate the deployment of new domestic capacity, strengthen the US nuclear fuel supply chain, and reinvigorate the nuclear industrial base,” Urenco CEO Boris Schucht said following the ground-breaking. “We built this plant at our customers’ request, and they backed it with long-term contracts. It is a commercial, world-class facility developed without any public funding.”
Since its first product shipment in 2012, UUSA has delivered every customer order on time and to specification, representing more than 50m SWU of production. The National Enrichment Facility began operations in 2010 and has the capacity to meet around one-third of the enrichment needs of US commercial nuclear power plants for LEU (the USA relies on enrichment capacity overseas for the rest).
