The new cascade is part of a programme that began in 2025 to install 700,000 separative work units (SWU) of enrichment capacity by early 2027. The capacity expansion – part of a mid- to long-term plan to refurbish and extend Urenco’s enrichment capacity across its sites in the USA and Europe – passed its halfway point in March when the fourth of the eight new cascades began producing low-enriched uranium. To date, all the new cascades have brought online ahead of schedule and on budget, Urenco USA says.
Next year, Urenco USA will begin refurbishing existing cascades at the site as part of ongoing capital investments in the facility to maintain a long-term, reliable supply of enrichment services. Construction has already started on a centrifuge storage building to house equipment removed from existing cascades during the refurbishment project until future disposal. The building is on schedule to be completed in early 2027.
In 2029, the company plans to begin construction of a new 2.1 million SWU enrichment plant at the site, with the first cascades expected to start production in 2032 and additional cascades installed until 2036.
“With these multi-billion-dollar investments, installed capacity at the facility will grow to more than 7 million SWU over the next 10 years,” the company said.
“The prospects for the US nuclear industry are exciting, and we are supporting it with our current capacity installation and the larger projects in the decade ahead,” said John Kirkpatrick, Managing Director of Urenco USA. “As the US nuclear industry works to grow significantly in the coming years, our teams are demonstrating what is possible when plans become actions and results.”
Background
About 0.7% of naturally occuring uranium is the uranium-235 (U-235) isotope, which can undergo the fission process by which energy is produced in a nuclear reactor (the rest is the uranium-238 isotope, which is not fissile). Most nuclear reactors in commercial operation today need fuel containing between 3.5% and 5% U-235. Advanced reactor designs that are now being developed – and many small modular reactors – will require higher enrichments still.
Enrichment increases the concentration of the U-235 isotope by passing gaseous uranium hexafluoride through gas centrifuges, in which a fast-spinning rotor inside a vacuum casing makes use of the very slight difference in mass between the different isotopes to separate them. As the rotor spins, the concentration of molecules containing the heavier, non-fissile, isotopes increases near the outer wall of the cylinder, with a corresponding increase in the concentration of molecules containing the lighter U-235 isotope towards the centre.
The Urenco USA National Enrichment Facility, in Eunice, New Mexico, is currently the only commercial uranium enrichment capacity in the USA. It began enriching uranium in 2010. The facility has an existing annual capacity of 4.3 million SWU, about a third of current US demand.
