After eight months of closed-door meetings, the Department of Energy’s Defense Production Act (DPA) Nuclear Fuel Cycle Consortium has rolled out its latest effort: a plan to strengthen America’s entire domestic nuclear fuel supply chain… over the next seven years.

Unveiled at a public meeting in Washington, the “Nuclear Dominance – 3 by 33” initiative brings together more than 90 companies to tackle every link in the chain, from mining and conversion to enrichment, deconversion, fabrication, recycling, and reprocessing.

Officials outlined three broad goals for 2033: building a secure, cost-competitive domestic supply chain; accelerating advanced reactor deployment while closing the fuel cycle; and leveraging the DPA framework to align workforce development, financing, innovation, and collaboration. They also floated a series of 60-day sprints aimed at delivering quick wins.

What remains unclear is exactly how any of this will happen. No detailed roadmaps, budgets, or specific milestones were provided, leaving observers to wonder: what exactly has been going on for the last eight months since the consortium was announced? 

We have followed this process closely since the group’s kickoff last October, after President Trump’s May 2025 executive orders targeting the nuclear industrial base. The DOJ’s grant of antitrust immunity to let fuel companies coordinate without legal risk was also recently announced. 

The United States is expanding its nuclear supply chain, but the pace still lags behind surging demand from data centers, manufacturing revival, and national energy-security priorities.

Is it just a lack of real urgency? Maybe the American tech bros running some of the new nuclear startups should take some notes from the Iranian nuclear industry about quickly rebuilding the nuclear fuel chain…