The Department of Energy is set to announce at least $900 million to boost uranium enrichment in the US nuclear power sector. Industry insiders anticipate the funding is for the low-enriched uranium (LEU) used in traditional reactors, like Westinghouse’s new AP1000, not the high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) needed for a new wave of small modular reactors (SMR).
“I think you’ve seen a sea change in the last 18 months to a year,” Bracewell’s Andrew Shaw told E&E News. “Prior to that, everybody was talking about SMRs, but now, with this significant load growth projected, there’s a lot of new interest in AP1000s.”
“There’s a defined market right now for LEU, whereas future demand when it comes to HALEU is pretty uncertain,” Shaw said. “You just don’t know how many of these reactors are actually going to go forward and how many will not.”
