The US Department of Energy (DOE) has exercised an option to extend Centrus Energy’s competitively-awarded contract to produce high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) until 30 June 2026. This extension is valued at approximately $110m. DOE has further options for continued production for up to eight additional years.
“This extension reflects the ongoing value of the partnership that the Department launched with Centrus in 2019 to restore America’s ability to enrich uranium and provide a source of HALEU that the Department and the nation urgently need,” said Centrus President & CEO Amir Vexler. “We are delivering meaningful quantities of HALEU to catalyse a new generation of reactors, while laying the groundwork to establish a large-scale, US-owned uranium enrichment capability to meet America’s commercial and national security requirements.”
In 2019, DOE contracted Centrus to license and construct a cascade of advanced centrifuges to demonstrate HALEU production at the American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio. In 2022, Centrus won a competitively-awarded, three-phase follow-on contract to bring the cascade into production and deliver HALEU for DOE use. Centrus completed Phase I of the contract in late 2023 by launching enrichment operations and demonstrating first-of-a-kind HALEU production with the delivery of 20 kilograms of HALEU.
Phase II of the contract called for Centrus to produce an additional 900 kilograms of HALEU by 30 June 2025, for the Department’s use. Phase III of the contract included three optional extension periods of three years each, for up to nine additional production years at an annual rate of 900 kilograms of HALEU uranium hexafluoride (UF6).
DOE has now executed a contract amendment to split the first three-year extension period into a one-year extension option followed by a two-year extension option. DOE exercised the first of these options, kicking off Phase III with additional HALEU production to 30 June 2026. The remaining options in the contract – at DOE’s sole discretion and subject to appropriations – would, if exercised, provide for up to eight additional years of production beyond the current extension.
The HALEU produced under this contract belongs to DOE and can be used to advance key national priorities such as enabling the demonstration and commercialisation of HALEU-fuelled advanced reactors.
