For the first time in decades, the United States is spending billions to enrich uranium on American soil. The Department of Energy announced $2.7 billion in contracts split among four companies, a sweeping effort to rebuild a domestic fuel supply chain that has withered since the Cold War while dependence on Russian enrichment services grew to fill the void.
The awards land roughly two years after President Biden signed the Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act into law on May 13, 2024, setting a hard timeline to phase out purchases from Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear enterprise. As of 2023, Russian facilities supplied roughly 24 percent of the enrichment services used by American reactors, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Replacing that share is not optional: the nation’s 93 operating reactors generate about a fifth of its electricity and represent the single largest source of carbon-free power on the grid.
Where the money is going
Three companies each received $900 million task orders structured for up to 10 years. A fourth firm got a smaller but strategically significant award focused on next-generation technology.
American Centrifuge Operating (Centrus Energy subsidiary): Selected to scale up its enrichment facility in Piketon, Ohio, to commercial production of high-assay low-enriched uranium, or HALEU. HALEU is uranium enriched to between 5 and 20 percent, a concentration higher than the fuel used in today’s conventional reactors but essential for most advanced reactor designs now moving toward deployment. Centrus currently operates the only licensed HALEU production facility in the country at Piketon, a small demonstration cascade that has been producing material under a prior DOE contract since late 2023.
General Matter: Awarded a separate $900 million indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract aimed at supplying HALEU for advanced reactors. The company has secured a 100-acre lease at the former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky through DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, repurposing a Cold War-era site that once produced enriched uranium for weapons and civilian power before shutting down in 2013.
Orano Federal Services: Received a $900 million task order. Orano’s parent company is one of the world’s largest nuclear fuel cycle firms, operating the Georges Besse II enrichment plant in France. The U.S. subsidiary’s specific implementation plans and facility locations under this contract have not been detailed in public filings.
Global Laser Enrichment (GLE): Awarded $28 million to develop laser-based uranium separation technology. GLE, a venture backed by GE Vernova and Cameco, has pursued laser enrichment for years as a potentially more energy-efficient alternative to centrifuges. The technology has never reached commercial scale in the United States, and no DOE document projects a timeline for that milestone, but the decision to fund it alongside conventional centrifuge projects signals the department wants to hedge its bets.
The full breakdown is laid out in a DOE announcement that identifies all four recipients, specifies funding amounts, and confirms the contracts can run up to a decade.
The procurement trail
These awards did not appear overnight. The DOE issued a request for proposals on SAM.gov on June 27, 2024, seeking domestically sourced low-enriched uranium and signaling its intent to award two or more 10-year contracts. Before the current task orders, the department had already selected six companies for LEU procurement contracts, each carrying a minimum value of $2 million, with the explicit goal of acquiring uranium from new domestic facilities or expansions of existing ones.
The DOE has framed the enrichment contracts as one piece of a broader industrial policy push to rebuild strategic nuclear supply chains, linking the spending to grid reliability, emissions reduction, and long-term energy security. The department’s domestic LEU program overview traces the full procurement timeline and sets out the rationale for using federal purchasing power to catalyze private-sector enrichment facilities.
Under the plan, DOE acts as an anchor buyer, purchasing enriched uranium from contractors and eventually reselling it to U.S. utilities. The intent is to bridge the gap between the Russian supply cutoff and the point at which new American capacity reaches steady production.
What is still being negotiated
The $900 million figures deserve a careful read. According to a Centrus Energy SEC filing, the DOE announced its selection of American Centrifuge Operating on January 5, 2026, but the task order remains subject to negotiations. That distinction matters: a selection announcement is not a signed contract, and the final dollar amount, delivery schedule, and performance milestones could shift during talks. Centrus has described the award as confirmed in its public communications, while the SEC filing preserves conditional language. The $900 million is best understood as a ceiling that negotiations may adjust downward.
Orano Federal Services and Global Laser Enrichment have disclosed far less. No detailed SEC filings or company-issued timelines tied to these specific awards appear in the public record as of June 2026. Without that information, it is difficult to assess how quickly each contractor can bring new capacity online or what intermediate milestones the DOE will use to measure progress.
Environmental and regulatory hurdles add another layer. The DOE has published a Final HALEU Environmental Impact Statement and a Record of Decision, but the practical effect on construction timelines at individual sites has not been spelled out. Whether Piketon, Paducah, or any other location can move from selection to operating enrichment plant within the contract window depends on Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing, state-level permitting, and potential legal challenges that remain unresolved.
The supply gap no one wants to talk about
Even with $2.7 billion committed, the transition away from Russian enrichment will not be seamless. Building centrifuge cascades and commissioning enrichment facilities takes years, and the Russian import ban’s phaseout timeline is already running. In the interim, U.S. utilities will likely lean more heavily on allied enrichment capacity from Urenco, which operates plants in the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom, and New Mexico, and from Orano’s European operations in France. But those facilities serve global customers, and increased American demand will compete with orders from South Korea, Japan, and European utilities pursuing their own nuclear expansions.
Short-term price pressure is a real possibility. As Russian material exits the market, enrichment costs could rise for U.S. reactor operators, a cost that would ultimately flow through to electricity rates. The DOE’s plan to resell its purchased uranium to utilities is designed to cushion that impact, but the precise mechanisms for pricing, allocation, and risk-sharing have not been detailed in public documentation.
For communities like Piketon and Paducah, the contracts carry a different kind of weight. Both towns built their identities around Cold War uranium operations and suffered economically when those facilities closed. Piketon’s gaseous diffusion plant shut down in 2001; Paducah’s followed in 2013. The prospect of new enrichment work at or near those sites represents not just energy policy but a potential economic lifeline, though the scale of local hiring and investment will depend on contract details that are still being finalized.
What comes next for domestic enrichment
The $2.7 billion commitment is substantial, but it is a starting gun, not a finish line. The contracts establish the financial architecture for a domestic enrichment revival. Turning that architecture into operating facilities that produce fuel on a reliable schedule will require sustained execution across multiple fronts: construction, licensing, workforce development, and coordination between federal buyers and private-sector utilities.
The most immediate marker to watch is whether the Centrus task order negotiations close on terms close to the announced $900 million, and how quickly the company can expand beyond its current small-scale HALEU demonstration at Piketon. After that, General Matter’s progress at Paducah and any public disclosures from Orano will signal whether the program is on track or running into the delays that have historically plagued large nuclear infrastructure projects in the United States.
For the 93 reactors that keep the lights on across 28 states, the math is unforgiving. They need fuel. Russia can no longer be the default supplier. And the new domestic plants that are supposed to fill that role exist, for now, mostly on paper and in contract language. The $2.7 billion buys time and intent. Whether it buys enough of both is the question that will define American nuclear energy’s next decade.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
