Urenco has officially announced a multi-billion-dollar investment to build a new enrichment plant at its National Enrichment Facility (NEF) in Eunice, New Mexico, expanding its domestic capacity by nearly 50%. As the only operating commercial uranium enrichment facility in North America, this expansion directly addresses the upcoming 2028 full US ban on Russian enriched uranium imports while supporting the growing electricity needs of advanced nuclear reactors and AI data centres. The US currently relies on Russia for up to 25% of its enriched uranium. This project helps secure the domestic supply chain before the full federal import ban takes effect
The expansion will add 2.1m separative work units (SWU – the standard measure of the effort required to separate U235 and U238), bringing total facility capacity to over 7m SWU. The facility’s current annual capacity is 4.3m SWU, which is approximately one-third of US demand. Construction will begin in 2029 using proven gas-centrifuge technology with initial centrifuge cascades starting production in 2032, reaching full operation by 2036, deploying up to 24 new cascades. This will support 300-600 construction jobs at its peak and 70 permanent operational positions. Urenco USA also intends to refurbish existing capacity at the site starting in 2027.
The plant will produce standard Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) currently used by the US nuclear fleet but also serves as the foundational feedstock required to produce emerging fuel variants such as LEU+ (up to 10% enrichment) and high-assay low enriched uranium (HALEU up to 20% enrichment). The expansion is fully financed by private capital and underpinned by new, long-term supply contracts signed with major domestic nuclear utility companies.
Urenco USA currently employs more than 500 staff and long-term contractors at NEF, which has been in commercial operation since 2010. Since 2006, the company has invested more than $5bn of private capital in the facility to provide a secure domestic supply of enriched uranium and is the only company to have licensed, built, operated, and expanded a commercial uranium enrichment facility in the US.
The U S capacity programme is part of a wider effort by Urenco Global to install 4.6m new SWU enrichment capacity at sites in the US, the Netherlands, and Germany over the next decade. With four operating production facilities, Urenco provides a diversity of supply that no other Western enrichment company can offer.
“For more than 15 years, Urenco USA has provided its utility customers with a reliable domestic supply of enriched uranium to power their nuclear reactors,” said Boris Schucht, CEO of Urenco Global, “This expansion reinforces our commitment to a resilient US nuclear fuel supply chain focused on meeting the long-term needs of our customers as well as supporting US energy security through continued investment by Urenco.”
Sarah Riedel, Head of Sales for Urenco said Urenco USA has always focused on being a reliable long-term supplier to America’s commercial nuclear power plants. “We thank our customers for their trust in us and the confidence they have in our capabilities. Their commitments through new long-term contracts support our investment decision to expand this vital facility that will fuel their operations for decades to come.”
John Kirkpatrick, Managing Director of Urenco USA, noted: “This is the most transformative expansion decision for Urenco in the past decade, and our New Mexico employees are ready to fuel the continued growth of the US nuclear power industry by bringing this additional capacity online. We are already preparing for the expansion and are excited to continue the work done onsite in recent years to add new capacity to our existing plant.”
NEF was planned by Louisiana Energy Services (LES), a partnership originally including Urenco, Westinghouse, and several major US utilities. It was named NEF because the company initially planned to build in Louisiana before shifting to New Mexico. In June 2006, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) granted NEF a first-of-its-kind combined “Construct and Operate” licence. This allowed it to jump straight from construction to active production without a secondary regulatory delay. Construction broke ground in late 2006, and active uranium enrichment began in June 2010.
However, Urenco is now potentially facing competition with US Department of Energy (DOE) funding other domestic projects to establish full nuclear fuel independence. Centrus Energy’s American Centrifuge Plant at a federal site in Piketon, Ohio, is the first US-owned technology enrichment plant to enter production in decades using advanced, domestically engineered gas centrifuges. Centrus launched a demonstration cascade in late 2023 and in early 2026 secured a $900m DOE HALEU task order. Backed by a $560m investment to scale high-rate centrifuge manufacturing in Tennessee, Centrus partnered with Fluor in February 2026 to transition the Ohio facility into a large-scale commercial plant. This will yield standard LEU, LEU+, and HALEU.
Global Laser Enrichment’s GLE’s Paducah Laser Enrichment Facility represents a radical departure from traditional centrifuge separation, using laser technology. The company, jointly owned by Silex Systems (51%) and Cameco (49%), holds the exclusive worldwide license for the SILEX laser-based uranium enrichment process. GLE has finalised its formal NRC commercial licence application for a new facility in Paducah, Kentucky. In March, the project received a $98.9m state incentive package to accelerate deployment. Instead of processing raw uranium mined from the ground, the Paducah plant intends to deploy lasers by 2030 to re-enrich over 200,000 tonnes of depleted uranium tails – legacy by-products already in storage at the site from historic Cold War operations.
General Matter is a highly secretive, venture-backed nuclear fuel start-up founded in 2024. Operating similarly to defence-tech firms like Anduril or SpaceX, the company is focused on breaking Russia’s monopoly on advanced nuclear fuels to power artificial intelligence data centres, advanced manufacturing, and national security reactors.
General Matter was co-founded by CEO Scott Nolan, a former SpaceX propulsion engineer who worked on the Merlin engine, and Lee Robinson, a former intelligence official who led energy investments for the Department of War’s Defense Innovation Unit. The company, incubated inside Founders Fund, emerged from stealth in April 2025, after raising a $50m Series A round led by Founders Fund, with billionaire investor Peter Thiel joining the company’s board of directors.
General Matter has rapidly secured massive federal backing to establish domestic HALEU capacity. In January, DOE awarded General Matter a $900m, 10-year milestone-based contract to produce enriched HALEU. To execute this contract, General Matter signed an agreement with DOE in August 2025 to lease a portion of the historic, decommissioned Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky. The DOE lease provides access to a minimum of 7,600 cylinders of legacy uranium hexafluoride tails. In March, General Matter went global. The US Export-Import Bank issued letters of interest providing up to $4.2bn in potential debt financing for Japan and South Korea to purchase nuclear fuel directly from General Matter over the next decade.
General Matter manufactures its primary equipment at private facilities in California but has not yet revealed the exact separation technology it uses. Management asserts it is a highly scalable, “novel physical separation process” with zero chemical or nuclear reactions. Construction at the Paducah site is slated to begin later in 2026, with commercial fuel production by the end of the decade.
