To achieve an additional 300 gigawatts of nuclear power supplied exclusively by domestic resources, the United States needs to invest between $105 billion to $170 billion into the nuclear fuel supply chain, according to a McKinsey & Company report this week.
Global management consulting firm McKinsey’s Monday report, “Understanding domestic nuclear fuel production options in the United States,” focuses on the Donald Trump administration’s goal of 300 gigawatts of incremental nuclear fuel capacity and 100% production within the U.S. The administration wants to have a total of 400 gigawatts of nuclear power in operation by 2050.
The U.S. leads the world in nuclear power with having almost 100 gigawatts currently in operation.
According to the report, to reach the goal of adding 300 gigawatts of nuclear power, the U.S. needs to invest between $15 billion to $20 billion for mining and milling, $30 billion to $45 billion for conversion, $30 billion to $40 billion for enrichment, $10 billion to $20 billion for fabrication and $20 billion to $45 billion for reprocessing. McKinsey said the total investment should be in the ballpark of $105 billion to $170 billion.
Along with the ample funding, enablement through things such as permitting, domestic infrastructure development and advanced technologies will be key in meeting production goals over the next 25 years, McKinsey said in the report.
The firm said the U.S. will be “severely challenged” in achieving 100% domestically sourced production as the country has gotten away from it over the years.
In uranium enrichment, the U.S. used to lead the world in 1985 with the country providing 64% of the production then. Fast-forward to 2020, McKinsey said the U.S. now lags behind China, Europe and Russia.
McKinsey acknowledged the Department of Energy’s $2.7 billion award to Centrus Energy, General Matter and Orano Federal Services aimed at strengthening domestic uranium enrichment. However, even with the expansion, it said it expects the domestic facilities to fall short of meeting demand, which would require the U.S. to continue to rely on foreign enriched uranium.
McKinsey said enrichment capabilities will be important for fuel fabrication as many advanced reactor designs will use high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) for its fuel. According to the report, fuel fabrication projections are reliant on future reactor designs and the projected cost to support nuclear growth is difficult to estimate.
“Compared with enrichment or reprocessing, however, fuel fabrication is less capital intensive but maintains stringent quality assurance standards, high fixed costs, and reactor-specific product differentiation,” as said in the document. “As enrichment levels increase and fuel designs diversify (for example, HALEU-based and advanced fuels), fabrication infrastructure must adapt in parallel.”
If the U.S. were to consider going down the road of fuel reprocessing, it could reduce the country’s dependence on foreign supply, McKinsey said. The firm cautioned that it would require a lot of funding to go down this path, and it would increase substantially to meet the goal of quadrupling its nuclear capacity by 2050.
With the U.S. banning the import of Russian uranium, which will go into effect by 2028, McKinsey said the financial trade-offs of fuel reprocessing are worth considering. The firm said other uncertainties linger around the viability of reprocessing and if it would be more cost-efficient than putting waste into dry storage casks.
Other uncertainties such as regulatory, first-of-a-kind risk and economic and market demand, plague the option of fuel reprocessing as well, McKinsey added.
For other parts of the fuel cycle, such as mining and milling uranium and conversion, the firm said the country has a lot of work to do to make meaningful progress towards domestic independence.
Though the U.S. has the largest demand for uranium due to having the largest reactor fleet, less than 1% of uranium is sourced from its own domestic mines, McKinsey said. According to the report, in 2023, nearly 90% of the uranium purchased by U.S. reactor operators was sourced from Australia, Canada, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Uzbekistan. However, since 2024, Texas and Wyoming have made efforts to ramp up their uranium mining operations.
Uranium conversion is a different situation since there are only five companies around the world active in this concentrated market, including Solstice Advanced Materials’ Metropolis Works (MTW), which is owned and operated by ConverDyn.
Though this sole domestic conversion facility meets about 50% of the U.S. demand at its current and projected operating capacity, McKinsey said it will likely fall short of meeting the demand 2050 goal as the firm projects the demand will outstrip the supply in its current capacity.