The Department of Energy (DOE) awarded money to two nuclear energy companies operating in Tennessee to help develop domestic uranium enrichment, which produces fuel for nuclear reactors.
American Centrifuge Operating (ACO) and Orano Federal Services (OFS) will both receive $900 million from the DOE.
General Matter, a nuclear company operating in Kentucky, also got $900 million from the federal government.
ACO will produce high-assay, low-enriched uranium, and OFS will make low-enriched uranium, according to the DOE press release.
These federal investments aim to strengthen American energy security and reduce reliance on foreign suppliers.
“President Trump is catalyzing a resurgence in the nation’s nuclear energy sector to strengthen American security and prosperity,” Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said on Monday. “Today’s awards show that this Administration is committed to restoring a secure domestic nuclear fuel supply chain capable of producing the nuclear fuels needed to power the reactors of today and the advanced reactors of tomorrow.”
In 2024, OFS, based in France, announced it would build a 750,000-square-foot complex in Oak Ridge. The company is currently building the Project IKE industrial enrichment facility.
Jean-Luc Palayer, CEO of Orano USA, said the company was “honored by DOE’s decision to identify Project IKE as a key driver for U.S. energy security.”
“Orano’s Project IKE facility is designed to generate a secure and significant American-based supply of enriched uranium,” he added. “For Orano, there is no mystery to making enriched uranium—and a lot of it—when you have reliable centrifuges, existing transport containers, and enrichment processes refined over decades of successful commercial operations.”
OFS said its goal is to produce low-enriched uranium by 2031.
The nuclear energy company also said America needs to significantly increase its domestic uranium enrichment to meet the president’s goal of quadrupling nuclear energy by 2050.
For ACO, it has a 440,000-square-foot nuclear facility in Oak Ridge and a plant in Piketon, Ohio. The company said it expects production at its Ohio facility to begin in 2029.
ACO announced last month that its Ohio facility had begun domestic centrifuge manufacturing to support low-enriched uranium.
– – –
Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network. Email tips to Zachery at [email protected].
