Urenco USA (UUSA) has begun production at its sixth gas centrifuge cascade at the National Enrichment Facility (NEF) in Eunice, New Mexico. This marks completion of 75% of its near-term expansion target. Installation of the sixth cascade is part of an ongoing project to add 700,000 separative work units (SWU) of capacity between 2025 and 2027 through eight centrifuge cascades.
UUSA expects to bring the seventh cascade online later in 2026 and the eighth in the spring of 2027. In 2029, the company will break ground on an entirely new enrichment plant at the New Mexico site to add an additional 2.1m SWU of capacity, targeted to phase into production between 2032 and 2036.
As the only commercial-scale uranium enrichment facility in the US, NEF currently produces 4.3m SWU annually, meeting about one-third of the total US demand for low-enriched uranium. The ongoing multi-billion-dollar expansions seek to scale this domestic output past 7m SWU over the next decade, strengthening the American nuclear supply chain in face of the total ban on Russian-enriched uranium imports set for 2028.
UUSA’s expansion of its domestic enrichment capacity will help ensure a long-term, reliable supply of fuel for current and future US reactors, supporting the Department of Energy’s goals to accelerate the deployment of new domestic capacity and strengthen the nuclear fuel supply chain. Starting in 2027, UUSA will also begin to refurbish existing cascades at the site as part of ongoing capital investments in the facility.
“We are consistently delivering new capacity to help fuel the US nuclear industry and allied nations, and our teams are doing it ahead of schedule and on budget,” said Jody Blackshear, UUSA Managing Director. “This experience will support our larger capacity programmes in the years ahead as we look to increase our enrichment production by more than 50% to meet the needs of our customers with traditional and advanced reactors.”
