On 15 May 2024 then-President Biden signed into law the Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act. The Act banned the import of Russian uranium and set out to revive domestic nuclear fuel production in the US, initially by repurposing $2.72bn appropriated by Congress for the Civilian Nuclear Credit Program, instead putting it towards the development of domestic uranium enrichment and conversion capacity. In September the NY Times suggested that uranium mining also needed a boost in the USA, saying it had ‘atrophied’.
The need for re-shoring fuel supply was restated in an analysis published by the US Department of Energy’s (US DOE’s) Energy Information Administration (EIA) in January 2025. The title of the analysis set out a stark warning: ‘US Nuclear Generators Import Nearly All the Uranium Concentrate They Use’ detailed a nearly complete reliance on imported enriched uranium for nuclear fuel for US reactors. In the same month, Foreign Policy magazine pointed out in an article (America’s Awkward Energy Insecurity Problem) that much-hyped plans to use advanced nuclear plants to power data centres and artificial intelligence ultimately also relied on Russia for advanced fuels.
The Trump administration has followed up on filling this gap. On 23 May 2025, Executive Order (EO) 14302, ‘Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base’, said that the USA currently faces “a variety of serious energy-related challenges ultimately affecting national security and preparedness‚ and in particular that the USA “currently lacks the sufficient domestic nuclear fuel resources to meet projected demand and requires swift and decisive action to secure the nation’s economic and national security interests‚. It directs the Secretary of Energy to seek ‘voluntary agreements’ from the industry to work together, under section 708 of the Defense Production Act (DPA) of 1950. This provides that “upon finding that conditions exist which may pose a direct threat to the national defense or its preparedness programs, the President may consult with representatives of industry, business, financing, agriculture, labor, and other interests‚ to make voluntary agreements and plans of action to help “provide for the national defense.
Plugging the fuel supply gap
As a consequence, DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy is establishing the Defense Production Act Consortium and will seek voluntary agreements with US companies. The voluntary agreements allow the industry to consult and develop plans of action to ensure that domestic capacity for mining and milling, conversion, enrichment, deconversion, fabrication, recycling and reprocessing of uranium is available.
EO 14302 said “The seriousness of this situation is both well-known and well-documented‚, citing the EIA analysis, among others, and it noted that since 2017, 87% of all new nuclear reactors that have been installed are based on reactor designs from two foreign countries. It said swift and decisive action was needed to “ensure our national and economic security by increasing fuel availability and production‚ to help “accelerate our path towards a more secure and independent energy future.
Section 708 of the DPA gives industry participants in any voluntary agreement or plan of action immunity for any civil or criminal action brought under US or state antitrust laws.
DOE is now working on procedures that will allow it to set up a DPA consortium. These will have to detail, among other things, the agreement’s overall scope, the applicability of antitrust protections for entities operating under a voluntary agreement, the procedures for the maintenance and availability of certain materials, meeting attendance provisions and the makeup of voluntary agreement and plan of action participants.
DOE recently published an interim rule on the DPA Consortium, with just 30 days for industry and public comment before it became effective. Its Office of Nuclear Energy is now working with industry participants to identify participants, as well as near and long-term goals, and the Consortium’s first meeting was due to be held on 14 October.
The planned voluntary agreements will prioritise those companies that have achieved objective milestones for the co-operative procurement of LEU and HALEU, but the DOE says the new DPA Consortium will operate separately from pre-existing measures for procurement of HALEU.
HALEU availability
A ‘HALEU Availability Program’ was established in 2020 to secure a domestic supply of HALEU for civilian domestic research, development, demonstration, and commercial use. Executive Order (EO)14301, Reforming Nuclear Reactor Testing at the Department of Energy, tasked DOE with reforming reactor testing programmes and establishing pilot demonstrations, with the goal of three reactors achieving criticality by 4 July 2026.
DOE is required to prioritise making HALEU available as required by the X-Energy Demonstration Reactor and the Terra Power Natrium Demonstration Reactor, both of which have government funding (under Pathway 1 Advanced Nuclear Reactor Demonstrations).
In addition, EO 14299, Deploying Advanced Nuclear Reactor Technologies for National Security, directed the DOE to release at least 20t of HALEU through a federal fuel bank fi 3t by 30 September 2024, 8t by 31 December 2025 and 10t by 30 June 2026 fi providing it is surplus to the requirements above. The HALEU is sourced from surplus stockpiles at DOE and NNSA facilities, such as the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee, the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, and the Idaho National Laboratory. In addition, the Department is supporting the production of HALEU supplies from a new enrichment capability at the Piketon plant at the DOE Portsmouth Site.
DOE created a HALEU allocation process for nuclear developers to request HALEU material. Evaluation of Requests were considered with regard to:
- Whether the project involves a government-funded programme, an public-private partnership or cost-shared agreement with DOE.
- Whether the use is consistent with DOE’s objective to establish a sustainable HALEU supply chain; its research and development mission; partnerships with universities to advance HALEU innovation and develop future human capital; and technology development and deployment of advanced nuclear technologies.
- A well-developed schedule with milestones clearly describing the status of licensing and regulatory approaches needed to support utilization.
- Objective evidence that the requesting entity has access to the capabilities to use the HALEU (eg capability to manufacture fuel for an initial core, validate design parameters, meet transportation and shipping requirements and provide licensed storage).
DOE received HALEU requests from 15 companies. In April it named five companies that met prioritisation criteria, with three of them requiring fuel delivery in 2025. It made conditional commitments to:
- TRISO-X, LLC.
- Kairos Power, LLC.
- Radiant Industries, Inc.
- Westinghouse Electric Company, LLC
- TerraPower, LLC.
In August, DOE announced three more successful companies (Round 2 Conditional Selections), which were:
- Antares Nuclear, Inc. for use in their advanced microreactor design that is looking to go critical by July 4, 2026, under the DOE’s Reactor Pilot Program
- Standard Nuclear, Inc. to establish TRISO fuel lines to support the Reactor Pilot Program and other TRISO-fueled reactors
- Abilene Christian University/Natura Resources LLC for use in a new molten salt research reactor that is under construction in Texas.
DOE has now started the contracting process to allocate the material to the first five companies, some of which could receive their HALEU this year.
