The United States ended its ability to enrich uranium in 2013 that for decades served the commercial nuclear markets and military applications. Instead of developing more efficient ways to produce enriched uranium, the United States kicked the can, relying on limited government stockpiles of (LEU) and down-blending highly enriched uranium (HEU) from dismantled U.S. nuclear weapons to fuel TVA’s commercial nuclear reactors and to support the National Nuclear Security Administration tritium mission.

A new generation of advanced small and micro nuclear reactors will largely rely on the ability to enrich High Assay Low-Enriched Uranium or HALEU for the next generation of advanced reactors. As a first step, the United States is planning to use downblended HEU from fuel used at the now shuttered EBR II fast reactor at the Idaho National Laboratory and turning it into HALEU, producing 10 metric tons (MTs). This may sound like a lot, but it’s a small fraction of the estimated over 180 MTs needed annually to support many advanced reactor designs for commercial or military applications. So what next?

The U.S. is funding a demonstration HALEU enrichment program that will produce less than a metric ton of HALEU starting in 2022, using just 16 centrifuges. This is an important step toward re-establishing domestic uranium enrichment capability and capacity, and for kickstarting a nascent HALEU production supply chain. Further, the Administration announced it will be creating a new HALEU Availability program and requested $33 million for the program in Fiscal Year 2022 to produce the less than one MT of HALEU annually – far too little in resources and output. One way to expand is for the US Government to infuse $200 million increments of funding annually for the next several years to build domestic enrichment capacity based on HALEU demand. With a cost-shared US Government investment and HALEU supply demand signal, such a HALEU enrichment program may begin to appear more attractive and nearer-term causing Wall Street to take a second look. Congress and the Biden Administration need to start now to invest and build a HALEU supply, 100MTs to start, to provide surety for the market and remove this risk. What would be the harm to the taxpayer? Very little. If the HALEU is not used or in sufficient amounts, excess could be stockpiled for future use for additional enrichment for Naval reactor fuels, mitigating future costs. Congress could begin making a down payment on such a program should the Infrastructure bill pass, fully funding the two Advanced Reactor Demonstrations Program, and potentially freeing up $244 million dedicated to the two demos in the FY2022 Energy and Water Appropriations bill that could be applied to the U.S. enrichment mission.;