ARLINGTON, VA – Centrus Energy has signed contracts worth $2.3 billion to provide low-enriched uranium to electric utilities and virtually all of it involves traditional LEU rather than the high-assay-low-enriched uranium (HALEU) Centrus CEO Amir Vexler said here Tuesday.
“The existing market is LEU,” Vexler told Exchange Monitor’s Nuclear Deterrence Summit, “There is no existing market for HALEU.”
While HALEU is considered the fuel of the future for advanced nuclear units, such as small modular reactors (SMRs), the companies developing SMRs are not yet ordering fuel, Vexler said.
After his presentation, Vexler stressed Centrus is using Department of Energy funding to help develop commercial HALEU facilities. Vexler hopes to see the first SMRs come online domestically within a year or so.
Bethesda, Md.,-based Centrus bills itself as an established American supplier of nuclear fuel and services for the nuclear power industry and national security purposes.
This month, Centrus was awarded a $900-million task order from DOE for uranium enrichment. It is one of three companies to get such orders.