The Department of Energy's (DOE’s) Nuclear Fuel Defense Production Act (DPA) Consortium will be meeting on Thursday morning to “provide updates to the public on the progress of the Consortium and provide commentary on approved Plans of Action”.
We've been covering the Nuclear Fuel Consortium's meetings since their initial get together in October. The consortium has met multiple times since then behind closed doors and has offered little insight as to what progress is being made to address the underlying issue of a lack of a domestic nuclear fuel chain in the United States, a lack which the following comprehensive chart shows in all its shocking glory.
The consortium is looking to address the shortages across the nuclear fuel supply chain from mining through milling, conversion, enrichment, deconversion, fabrication, recycling, and reprocessing. Parallel progress has been made in various forms over the past few months.
The DOE launched the Fuel Line Pilot Program to kickstart the fabrication stage and recently put out an RFA for the recycling and reprocessing steps. As we've covered at length, the enrichment stage of the fuel chain has been addressed with almost $3 billion in awards from the DOE and over $4 billion from the Ex-Im Bank.
If you can count the outstanding award program that's already been announced for the deconversion stage, the DOE has yet to address the mining, milling, and conversion stages.
We've documented this at length as well, as the US imports about 99% of the raw uranium ore for its commercial nuclear power fleet. Milling capacity is also at a minimum in the country, and conversion is just as limited with only one facility in operation in the States.
For reference, as we similarly provided in our coverage of the Department of Justice clearing the companies involved in the consortium of potential antitrust violations, here are the companies to keep an eye on Thursday:
- Uranium mining - UEC, EU, URG, and UUUU
- Uranium milling - UUUU, AEC, and UEC
- Uranium conversion - SOLS, SILXY, and UEC
- Uranium enrichment - LEU, NNE, SILXY, ASPI, and BWXT
- Fuel fabrication - CCJ, GEV, BWXT, OKLO, and ATI
- Recycling and reprocessing - OKLO, FLR, AMTM, and BWXT