Urenco Breaks Ground on Multi-Billion-Dollar Expansion to Boost US Uranium Enrichment Capacity by 50%

The United States wants to rapidly expand nuclear power to meet clean energy targets and surging data center demands, but it faces a hard policy deadline. In 2028, a federal ban on Russian-enriched uranium takes full effect, threatening to choke off the fuel supply for the existing commercial reactor fleet. For years, the vulnerability of the Western nuclear supply chain has been a looming tension in energy markets.[1]

The physical answer to that policy bottleneck began taking shape this week in the New Mexico desert. Urenco USA officially broke ground on a multi-billion-dollar expansion of its National Enrichment Facility in Eunice, which currently stands as the only commercial-scale uranium enrichment plant operating on American soil.[2][3]

The scale of the project is massive. The expansion will increase the site's capacity by nearly 50 percent, adding 2.1 million separative work units (SWU) to the facility's current 4.3 million SWU baseline. Combined with a smaller, ongoing upgrade, the investment will push total site output to more than 7 million SWU per year over the next decade.[3][5]

While the groundbreaking is a major milestone, the timeline underscores the sluggish, deliberate nature of nuclear infrastructure. Construction of the new plant is scheduled to begin in 2029. The initial centrifuge cascades will enter production in 2032, with full installation continuing in phases through 2036.[1]

To understand why this expansion takes years to execute, it helps to understand the mechanism of uranium enrichment. Natural uranium mined from the earth consists primarily of two isotopes: U-238 and a tiny fraction—about 0.7 percent—of U-235. Commercial light-water reactors require fuel enriched to between 3 and 5 percent U-235 to sustain a nuclear chain reaction.[2][5]

Urenco uses proven gas-centrifuge technology to achieve this separation. Uranium hexafluoride gas is fed into tall, cylindrical rotors spinning at extremely high speeds. The centrifugal force pushes the heavier U-238 molecules toward the outer wall of the cylinder, while the lighter U-235 molecules concentrate near the center, where they are siphoned off.[2][5]

Because a single centrifuge only slightly increases the concentration of U-235, the gas must be passed sequentially through thousands of centrifuges connected in series and parallel. This formation is known as a cascade. The Eunice expansion will require the installation of up to 24 new cascades to achieve its 2.1 million SWU target.[1]

The industry measures this effort in separative work units (SWU). Rather than measuring the physical weight of the final product, SWU quantifies the energy and effort required to separate the isotopes. It is the standard metric for enrichment capacity worldwide.[2][5]

Urenco USA currently supplies approximately one-third of the enrichment needs for the US commercial nuclear power fleet. Historically, the United States relied on Russia for about 20 percent of its enriched uranium, a dependency that became a glaring strategic vulnerability following the invasion of Ukraine.[1][3]

The impending 2028 ban on Russian imports has forced domestic utilities to secure long-term contracts with Western suppliers. These firm offtake agreements convert enrichment from a volatile commodity into a predictable budget item, providing the financial bedrock that makes Urenco's expansion viable.[4][5]

Notably, the Eunice project represents the largest privately funded nuclear fuel investment in US history. The expansion is being executed entirely without public funding or government subsidies, raising Urenco's total private capital injection at the New Mexico site to substantially more than $8 billion.[1][4]

Despite the lack of direct subsidies, the project aligns perfectly with federal strategy. US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright attended the groundbreaking ceremony, signaling Washington's strong support for private capital stepping in to reinvigorate the domestic nuclear industrial base and secure the fuel supply chain.[2]

The expansion also serves as a bridge to the future. The low-enriched uranium (LEU) produced by these new cascades serves as the foundational fuel for today's reactors. However, it will also serve as essential feedstock to produce high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) in the future, which is required for the advanced reactor designs planned for deployment in the 2030s.[3][5]

While the expansion is a massive step forward, the timeline highlights a looming challenge. With first production not starting until 2032, there is a four-year gap between the 2028 Russian import ban taking full effect and the arrival of this new domestic capacity.[5]

During that interim period, utilities will have to rely on existing stockpiles, a smaller 700,000 SWU upgrade at the Eunice facility finishing in 2027, and capacity from allied nations in Europe to keep their reactors fueled.[3][4]

The New Mexico project is part of a larger, global effort by UK-headquartered Urenco to install 4.6 million SWU of new enrichment capacity across its sites in the United States, the Netherlands, and Germany over the next decade.[1][2]

Together, these expansions illustrate how the Western nuclear supply chain is physically realigning to permanently decouple from Russian state-owned enterprises. Fission's growth has historically been limited by industrial capacity rather than physics, and that capacity is now being poured in concrete.[4][5]