US lays the groundwork to restore a full uranium fuel cycle.

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Not since the Cold War has the United States attempted to rebuild the infrastructure needed to fuel its nuclear fleet from within. Mines long dormant are beginning to turn out ore again, dwindling stockpiles are being moved into circulation, and advanced fuel research is underway, if only in prototype. Still, a full chain – from extraction to fabrication – remains incomplete, and the gaps between ambition and delivery are beginning to expose the limits of America's nuclear fuel strategy.

Beneath the surge of federal programs and policy announcements is a far more practical question – what will it actually take to restore the capability to fuel a nuclear fleet without foreign supply?

At the front end of the cycle, raw uranium ore has once again begun shipping out of Energy Fuels Inc.'s Pinyon Plain mine to the company's White Mesa Mill in Utah, the only conventional uranium mill in operation on American soil. While conversion has resumed at ConverDyn's Metropolis Works in Illinois – one of the few commercial facilities in the country capable of restoring this long-dormant step of readying uranium ore for enrichment.

Meanwhile, enrichment contracts have been awarded to Centrus Energy Corp. for early-stage production at the American Centrifuge Plant in Ohio, where federally held stockpiles are being moved into limited civilian circulation.

On the demand side of the equation, inactive infrastructure is being brought back online, such as the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Michigan, shuttered since 2022, which is now on track to become the first recommissioned nuclear plant in U.S. history.

In parallel, early demonstration of the next generation of nuclear power plants – such as TerraPower's Natrium fast reactor in Wyoming and the Department of Defense's Project Pele microreactor at Idaho National Laboratory – are moving forward under narrowly scoped timelines and isolated deployment models.

Yet, bridging the divide between these various components of the U.S. uranium-to-nuclear energy supply chain is not simply a matter of progress – it is a matter of sequence and scale. Extraction alone cannot restore the cycle, nor can enrichment without conversion, or fabrication without fuel.

Each step depends on the one before or after it, and without throughput that is scaled to meet demand or coordination strong enough to bind the process end-to-end, the system stalls. The challenge is not just to build, but to synchronize – and the architecture for that has not yet emerged.

Like much of the major manufacturing in the U.S., the infrastructure to sustain a domestic supply chain, let alone the nuclear fuel cycle, has been decommissioned, outsourced, or mothballed.

Although what remains is slowly being revived – through targeted investments, scattered pilot projects, and a regulatory framework shaped more by inertia than continuity – the industrial base, largely untested at the scale required, has yet to face the harder task ahead: assembling those parts fast enough to matter, before the lights go out.

Uranium at home

Like most things, clean nuclear energy begins in the earth.

Whether extracted through in-situ recovery across the basins of Wyoming or hauled from hardrock shafts in northern Arizona, the raw material must first be extracted and then processed into a concentrated and usable form.

As of 2025, the list of domestic producers remains a short one, with Colorado-based Energy Fuels, one of the country's primary uranium producers, being among the first to kickstart operations at its past-producing Pinyon Plain uranium mine in Arizona.

Pulling high-grade ore from deep underground just south of Grand Canyon National Park, this small but mighty 14-acre (six hectares) site recently produced roughly 151,000 pounds of uranium.

With ore averaging around 1% uranium, Pinyon Plain ranks among the highest-grade uranium mines in the country – and one of the few positioned to deliver meaningful production over the next several years.

Shifting north to Wyoming – where some of the most consistent domestic uranium production still takes place – Ur-Energy Inc., enCore Energy Corp., and Peninsula Energy Ltd. operate a method of uranium mining a little different from traditional methods.

Known as in-situ recovery (ISR), this technique uses a series of wells to circulate a groundwater-based solution through porous ore-bearing rock, dissolving the uranium and pumping it to the surface for processing – although less invasive than excavation, it hinges upon favorable water testing and inconsistent permitting approvals.

Meanwhile, mining company Uranium Energy Corp. has reactivated several of its previously idled ISR sites across South Texas and Wyoming's Powder River and Great Divide basins. Limited production also continues at Cameco Corp.'s Smith Ranch-Highland project east of Casper, Wyoming – one of the largest licensed uranium operations in the U.S., though currently running below capacity.

In Utah, Anfield Energy's Velvet-Wood project is the first uranium mine to undergo expedited environmental review under new emergency permitting procedures enacted by the Department of the Interior.

Introduced following a national energy emergency declared in early 2025, the streamlined process aims to fast-track projects deemed critical to U.S. energy independence.

Velvet-Wood is expected to produce around 750,000 pounds of uranium and 2.5 million pounds of vanadium annually over a projected 15-year mine life – a meaningful boost to both nuclear fuel and critical materials supply.

Beyond these known districts, exploratory activity has picked up across the western U.S. and Alaska, though few projects have yet advanced toward permitting or production.

While domestic output inches forward, much of the gap is still bridged by allied imports, with Canadian supply playing the most integrated role.

Sourced from deposits in Saskatchewan and routed through Cameco's Port Hope facility in Ontario, this material continues to underpin both utility contracts and interim federal reserves. Smaller volumes from Australia and France also remain in circulation, sustaining a supply network still reliant on partners as the U.S. works to reassemble its own.

Uranium Energy Corp.

Once processed into yellowcake, uranium from reopened mines is ready to reenter the front end of America's fuel cycle.

Ore to yellowcake

Wherever it comes from, once unearthed, uranium ore must undergo a series of chemical separations and concentrations before it becomes fuel-ready material – a process that begins at the mill.

Crushed, leached, and refined into triuranium octoxide (U3O8), more commonly known as yellowcake, it thus becomes a stable, transportable compound that marks the handoff between mining and conversion.

In the U.S., the handoff now depends almost entirely on a single facility: the White Mesa Mill. Owned and operated by Energy Fuels, White Mesa its capable of processing both conventional ore and alternate feed materials. However, its throughput remains limited by permitting restrictions, intermittent deliveries, and a regulatory landscape not designed for volume or velocity.

While new projects are beginning to emerge – most notably Anfield Energy's planned restart of the nearby Shootaring Canyon mill, idle since 1982 – White Mesa continues to serve as the sole point of entry from raw ore to usable material.

If brought back online as planned in 2026, Shootaring Canyon would mark the first expansion of domestic uranium milling capacity in decades, easing pressure on White Mesa and improving throughput across the front end of the cycle.

Until then, this step remains a structural bottleneck and a potential vulnerability along the nuclear fuel cycle – a single-site constraint at a critical juncture.

Once refined into yellowcake, uranium must be converted into uranium hexafluoride (UF6) – the gaseous form required for enrichment.

Much the same, uranium conversion now hinges entirely on a single site – ConverDyn's Metropolis Works. Idle since 2017 and revived in 2023 with federal support, it is the only commercial-scale converter in the U.S., and with no redundant capacity elsewhere, it remains a structural vulnerability in both economic and operational terms.

Despite the simplicity of the term, conversion is a technically complex, multi-stage chemical process. But its role is straightforward: without UF6 there is no enrichment, and without enrichment, uranium cannot fuel a reactor.

For the past decade, this step had been outsourced almost entirely to allied facilities in Canada and France. Now, with ConverDyn restarted and production ramping, the U.S. has regained at least partial control over this essential link in the chain.

As with mining and milling, however, throughput remains a constraint. Until conversion capacity can absorb the increasing volumes of yellowcake from White Mesa and ISR operations, pressure will continue to build across the chain. And while ConverDyn's revival fills a longstanding void, it remains just one step. The final stage depends on infrastructure that is only now beginning to recover.

Nuclear Energy Agency

Gloved technician holds finished uranium dioxide fuel pellets, the compact ceramic cylinders that are loaded into metal rods and bundled into assemblies for use in nuclear reactors.

Enriching U.S. nuclear

If conversion is where technical complexity enters the fuel cycle, enrichment is where strategic consequence takes hold. The ability to raise the fissile content of uranium – from natural concentrations to the levels required by civilian reactors – has long defined the boundary between energy independence and reliance.

In the U.S., this capability now depends on a single operator. Located in New Mexico, Urenco USA's National Enrichment Facility (NEF) is currently the only commercial-scale enrichment plant capable of producing low-enriched uranium (LEU) for the country's existing reactor fleet.

Using centrifuge technology licensed under an international partnership, its output supplies much of the domestic demand for standard reactor fuel – but only at the lower end of the enrichment spectrum.

Used by all 94 civilian reactors spread across 28 states, LEU fuels roughly 18% of the nation's total electricity generation – providing nearly half of all carbon-free electricity in the U.S.

According to the Energy Information Administration, American reactors consumed the equivalent of 44 million pounds of U3O8 in 2023 alone, far exceeding current domestic enrichment capacity.

Even operating at full output, NEF covers only a fraction of that demand, with the rest being met through legacy stockpiles or foreign contracts – an imbalance that reinforces the strategic importance of expanding capacity at home.

As existing reactors continue to run at a 93% capacity factor, and new builds or restarts come online, that shortfall is expected to widen.

While LEU typically contains less than 5% of the fissile isotope U-235 necessary to sustain a nuclear reaction, advancements in fuel technology – particularly for small modular and microreactors – are demanding more from less.

Once limited to research and defense applications, a new grade of fuel has become central to the next phase of nuclear development. Known as high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), it is now widely anticipated as the necessary fuel for many of the next-generation reactor designs moving toward deployment.

Pushing enrichment levels up to 20%, HALEU delivers higher energy density, longer core life, and smaller physical footprints – traits essential to compact, flexible reactor technologies. But despite its importance, no commercial-scale supply chain for HALEU currently exists in the U.S.

Work to bridge this enrichment shortfall has already begun, anchored by Centrus Energy, which in late 2023 completed its first production run of HALEU at its Ohio plant.

Backed by a $150 million Department of Energy (DOE) contract, the facility deployed a 16-machine demonstration cascade – not built for throughput, but to establish regulatory precedent and validate the technical process.

As a milestone, the Ohio plant has proven its capability. As a HALEU link in the domestic supply chain, it remains a placeholder, as scaling from kilograms to commercial supply will require a full buildout, long-term contracts, and policy certainty strong enough to carry the endeavor through.

DOE's HALEU Availability Program has selected five developers to receive limited material from federal stockpiles, while also advancing new contract frameworks to support commercial enrichment at scale.

But without deconversion infrastructure or a secondary supplier, the entire effort continues to hinge on a single site, still in its pilot phase.

RIA Novosti archive, image #132603 / Ruslan Krivobok / CC BY-SA 3.0

A technician inspects a nuclear fuel assembly at the Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrate Works, where enriched uranium is fabricated into precise, reactor-ready configurations – the final step in the uranium fuel cycle.

Enrichment constraints

Behind every advance in the domestic mines-to-reactors nuclear fuel cycle stands a federal framework attempting to reassemble the chain through funding, mandate, and administrative momentum.

In January, President Trump signed the "Unleashing American Energy" executive order, directing agencies to review and rescind regulations that impede domestic energy development – including nuclear – while prioritizing permitting reform, mineral independence, and infrastructure acceleration.

That momentum carried into April, with a second order, "Protecting American Energy from State Overreach," which directed the Department of Justice to challenge state-level energy restrictions deemed contrary to federal objectives, reinforcing the administration's commitment to centralized, energy-dominant policy.

Together, these moves marked a turn not just in tone, but in tempo – a shift from policy interest to logistical execution, with federal action no longer just funding nuclear, but staging the infrastructure required to sustain it.

Now, with each segment of the nuclear fuel cycle beginning to move again, the pieces are in motion, but not yet in concert; alignment remains limited, and while progress is measurable, it is uneven and exposed. Until these steps are synchronized, a domestic fuel cycle will remain out of reach – and certainly not provide the energy a country can depend on.