China holds edge over US in advanced nuclear fuel production

China and Russia are the only countries with infrastructure to produce HALEU at scale, according to a US watchdog report. The United States lacks commercial-scale capacity, raising concerns over fuel supplies as Washington seeks to expand advanced nuclear power.

Washington: China is one of only two countries capable of producing a specialised nuclear fuel at scale, giving Beijing a potentially important advantage as the United States races to deploy advanced reactors, according to a congressional watchdog report.

The US Government Accountability Office said Russia and China currently have infrastructure capable of producing high-assay low-enriched uranium, or HALEU, at scale. The fuel is required by most advanced nuclear reactors under development.

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The United States has no commercial-scale HALEU enrichment capacity, while the amount available through government programmes may not be sufficient to meet demand from reactor developers in the coming years, the GAO said in a report this week.

The finding highlights a strategic vulnerability for Washington as it seeks to expand nuclear generation, supply power to energy-intensive industries and reduce dependence on Russian nuclear fuel.

More than a dozen advanced-reactor developers, including TerraPower, X-energy and Kairos Power, have requested HALEU from the US Department of Energy for demonstration projects extending into the 2030s.

The department expects to have about 21.2 metric tonnes of HALEU available by the end of 2028 and 23.4 metric tonnes by the end of 2030. Demand is likely to exceed that supply before commercial production becomes available, officials told the watchdog.

The size of the shortfall remains uncertain because several proposed reactors face ambitious development and licensing schedules.

China’s existing infrastructure could become more significant if advanced reactors are deployed faster than Western countries can establish alternative fuel supplies. However, US national-security restrictions and wider strategic tensions make Chinese material an unlikely solution for Washington.

European enrichment consortium Urenco expects to produce about 10 metric tonnes of HALEU annually at a British facility, but the supply is not expected until the early 2030s, the report said.

TerraPower has separately entered into an enrichment agreement with a South African company because it did not believe the US Energy Department could supply sufficient HALEU within the required timeframe for its first reactor core.

The Energy Department’s 2024 assessment estimated annual US commercial demand at 50 metric tonnes by 2035, rising to about 500 metric tonnes by 2050.

Washington has awarded $1.8 billion to two companies to develop domestic HALEU capacity. It also awarded $900 million to one company to expand production of conventional low-enriched uranium used by the existing reactor fleet.

The GAO, however, said the department had not documented an economic analysis showing whether its measures would be sufficient to create commercially sustainable domestic production.

It recommended that the department complete such an analysis, finalise a congressionally required report on HALEU availability and improve programme-management documents.

The Energy Department said it plans to issue the HALEU availability report by November and complete an economic analysis by June 2027.

The report also found that the United States has relied since 2013 on diminishing uranium inventories for national-security requirements because it lacks a fully domestic enrichment capability using US-origin technology.

The National Nuclear Security Administration estimates that efforts to restore long-term fuel supplies for defence missions could cost about $140 billion through 2105. Existing inventories are expected to remain sufficient until the early 2040s.