Part 2 of 3 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
Jonathan Hinze is the president at UxC, a nuclear consulting firm. He said, “Then Fukushima happened,” referring to the nuclear accident in Japan in 2011. “The bottom fell out of the market, and they never really recovered from that.”
The price of enriched uranium declined from a peak of one hundred and fifty-five dollars in 2011 to thirty-four dollars per unit measurement in 2018 following the events in Japan and the decline in global demand.
To support national security, the U.S. must use its own enrichment technology, as long-standing nonproliferation agreements forbid the use of foreign-origin technology for national security missions. High-assay, low-enriched uranium, or HALEU, is enriched to a higher purity than fuel for conventional reactors and is generally needed for Generation IV nuclear reactor designs.
In November 2023, following growing progress on the development of Generation IV reactors, Centrus Energy, based in Bethesda, Maryland, produced its first batch of HALEU. With Centrus’ inaugural batch and plans to expand their nuclear fuel centrifuge cascade, the U.S. might yet break Russia’s de facto monopoly on advanced reactor fuel.
However, expanding Centrus’ Ohio plant will require billions of dollars in investment, customer commitments and a level of sustained political backing that has often failed in U.S. nuclear initiatives.
Since the rename, Centrus has yet to establish commercial-scale uranium enrichment, and it’s squabbled with DOE.
A July audit this year from the DoE’s inspector general questioned a 2019 contract with Centrus. The audit pointed out concerns about DoE’s procedures and Centrus’ financial viability at the time, saying that the contract potentially prevented the government from getting the best value.
Brian Wirth is the head of the University of Tennessee’s nuclear engineering department. He said, “The inability by Centrus to deliver sufficient quantities of cost-competitive SWUs in the U.S. market has resulted in the U.S. nuclear power fleet sourcing two-thirds to 75 percent of its enriched uranium needs from Europe and Russia.”
Separative work units (SWU) measure the ability to separate isotopes during the uranium enrichment process. It’s critical for developing nuclear fuel.
Wirth continued, “Based on this record, it is very difficult to be confident in their ability to deliver on the increased enrichment demands to supply the HALEU required by small modular reactors.”
However, Hinze, the consultant, says Centrus was largely responding to the post-Fukushima market. Now, nuclear power’s apparent comeback could bring uranium enrichment home to the U.S.
Hinze added, “Until the last few years, you haven’t had any market interest in having them develop a commercial enrichment plan. But I would argue that has changed now. The tides are turning, so this could be different.”
Some analysts complain that Urenco, a consortium owned by the British and Dutch governments and two German utilities, has been reducing production and criticize Centrus’ historic neglect of enrichment infrastructure for the current problems, the uranium enrichment crisis facing the U.S. is predominantly driven by inconsistent market signals.
U.S. Enrichment was privatized in the 1990s, but in the past 10 years, the federal government has increasingly offered subsidies to the sector. In the early 2000s, expectations were high for a nuclear renaissance before the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident reduced utility, government and public appetite for the source.
Terrani of Standard Nuclear said “This back and forth makes your infrastructure disappear. That needs to come back up. It confuses the markets. You’re either market-based or you’re not.”
Please read Part 3 next