ADVANCED FUELS | FUEL & FUEL CYCLE
Above: Urenco USA’s New Mexico site has been approved to enrich uranium up to 10%
The NRC’s authorisation came after Urenco implemented changes in its plant systems and procedures and completed its operational readiness review. Initial production of LEU+ is expected to take place this year, with the first product deliveries to a fuel fabricator planned for 2026. Preparing for LEU+ production required the implementation of more than 30 new IROFS (Items Relied on for Safety) and more than 250 modifications to license basis and programme documents. However, commercial justification remains the gating
factor for further HALEU development. As Poortman notes: “We’ll have to see how good this commercial team is at creating an order book.” While Urenco does not engage directly in fuel fabrication
its customers are typically utilities or reactor developers which specify the downstream supply chain. Coordination with fabricators is nevertheless essential due to licensing constraints. HALEU-handling certification remains limited, and fabricators must secure the appropriate NRC or national licences to receive 20% enriched material. “Making sure that they’re able to receive the material is
key. You can’t ship something somewhere and they can’t get it,” says Mori This interdependency highlights the challenging nature of developing the entire HALEU ecosystem from scratch – enrichers, fabricators, reactor developers, and regulators must all align in time for demonstration reactors to proceed. Even so, Urenco emphasises a general sense of industry optimism, reinforced by the pace of DOE allocations and the number of developers progressing to licensing workshops, test campaigns, and first-core engineering. “If next year some of them are successful and reach
criticality, it could move very quickly for them and that response time may not be as quickly as we can move,” says Mori. Indeed, market forecasting remains a substantial
Above: Aalo Atomics has signed a contract with Urenco for LEU that will be fabricated into fuel pins to power the Aalo-X experimental reactor
www.neimagazine.com | December 2025 | 25
challenge across the sector but Urenco’s strategy has evolved into a coordinated multinational effort to deliver 20% enriched fuel by 2031, coinciding with the development timeframes for many of the first of a kind small modular reactors. With the vision build potentially thousands of SMR units in diverse applications over the coming years, the supply chain will need the flexibility to step up quickly above all else. Urenco believes it is positioning itself to do exactly that, meeting early demand with LEU+, enabling HALEU for demonstration reactors by 2031, and ready to scale as advanced fission transitions from concept to commercial reality. ■
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