World Nuclear News
World Nuclear News
What is needed for nuclear fuel cycle to meet future rising demand?
In the second of a two-part special report from the World Nuclear Fuel Cycle 2025 conference held in Canada, Claire Maden reports on the opportunities and challenges facing players across the entire fuel sector.
There is the aim to triple nuclear energy capacity by 2050, shared by many governments, businesses and financial institutions. But will there be the necessary fuel available if that goal is to be reached?
Among the issues covered in this episode are developments in the uranium enrichment sector and the challenges faced by transporters of nuclear materials. It also includes discussion of innovative technologies, and the outlook for nuclear fuel markets.
This episode features:
Christo Liebenberg, LIS Technologies CEO and COO
John Donelson, Centrus Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer
John-Paul Jones, Urenco Head of Commercial and Market Intelligence
Jean-Luc Palayer, Orano USA President and CEO
Eileen Supko, Energy Resources International President and World Nuclear Transport Institute North American Representative
Kurtis Hinz, TAM International President and CEO
Paul Chan, Clean Core Thorium Energy Chief Technology Officer
Iftikhar Haque, Terrestrial Energy Vice President, Nuclear Supply Chain
Micah Hackett, Kairos Power Vice President Fuels and Materials
Tom Brookmire, Dominion Energy Manager, Nuclear Fuel Procurement
Lourdes Guzmán, ENUSA Industrias Avanzadas Uranium Supply Manager
Chris Opperman, C5 Capital Operating Partner
Jonathan Hinze, UxC, LLC President
Sama Bilbao y León, World Nuclear Association Director General
Key links to find out more:
World Nuclear News
World Nuclear Fuel Cycle 2025
'Great opportunities ahead' for fuel cycle
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Sign up to the World Nuclear News daily or weekly news round-ups
Contact info:
alex.hunt@world-nuclear.org
Episode credit: Presenter Alex Hunt. Co-produced and mixed by Pixelkisser Production
Hello and welcome to the World Nuclear News Podcast. I'm Alex Hunt. This episode features a second part of the special report from Claire Maiden on the World Nuclear Fuel Cycle Conference, where key players came together to discuss how to meet the fuel demands of fast-growing nuclear capacity. Sectors discussed include uranium enrichment, transporting nuclear materials and the outlook for nuclear fuel markets. The annual event, co-organised by the Nuclear Energy Institute and World Nuclear Association, is a top-level forum for sharing information affecting the nuclear fuel cycle, with a focus on enhancing the economic competitiveness of nuclear energy.
SPEAKER_11:The World Nuclear Fuel Cycle 2025 conference that took place in Canada in April looked in depth at just what is going to be needed from the nuclear fuel cycle players to support the goal of tripling nuclear capacity by the middle of this century. The mood at the conference was very much one that recognised that this is a time of great opportunity for the nuclear industry. So in this, the second part of two World Nuclear News podcasts dedicated to the event, we're going to hear a little more about just what is driving developments in the uranium enrichment sector, the challenges that are being faced by transporters of nuclear materials, innovative nuclear technology and the outlook for nuclear fuel markets. Turning to the enrichment sector first. Thank you for watching. First up, we heard from Christo Liebenberg, co-founder, CEO and COO of LIS Technologies, about the company's plans for operating a US enrichment plant using its proprietary laser-based technology. Christo said that further down the line, the company is looking at potential siting options in several states, but right now its efforts are firmly centred on Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
SPEAKER_00:So our first plant is going to be, we will be in production in the early 2030s. We are planning a 5 million zoo LEU plant to begin with, followed a year or two later with a 3 million zoo per year HALU plant. So it's all laser enrichment technology. So our phased approach is, we've got three or four stages or phases. In phase one, this year and next year, two years, is to get back to baseline, re-demonstrate enrichment factors that were achieved with the technology back in the early 90s. Get back to baseline. Not only do that, but also optimize this process and then show that we can do LEU in one stage or one step and HALU in two stages. This is laser enrichment, very, very selective. So that's phase one. Phase two is add another two years. So over the next four years, concurrently with phase one, is scaling. We are working with laser contractors to scale these lasers for us. I'll talk later about some of these scaling challenges, but we do not see any roadblocks in our scaling of these lasers. And then show that with these scaled and industrialized equipment that we could also then do LEU in one stage, HALU in two stages. And then we get to phase three. Phase three is all about commercialization. It is basically taking these systems from phase two and copy and paste them for phase three and build a full-scale laser isop separation enrichment plant. First, one million Sioux, three million Sioux, and then five million Sioux by about 2032, 2033.
SPEAKER_11:LAS Technologies' Chrysler technology is of US origin, and that's an important consideration for the USA, not only from the point of view of lessening reliance on overseas enrichment capacity, but also because any enrichment services for US defence purposes, including submarine fuel, have to be provided by US plants using US origin technology. Centris is quite a way down the line towards building a commercial enrichment plant using U.S. technology. It's already deployed U.S.-designed centrifuges to produce HALU for the Department of Energy at its American centrifuge plant in Ohio. According to Centris Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer John Donaldson, following an investment decision, it could expand operations to produce commercial quantities of enriched uranium quite rapidly.
SPEAKER_15:So what are we making currently? We're making HALU. The HALU market's still sort of aspirational. The Department of Energy is a customer, but really where most of the customers out here in the audience is in the LEU market. So we would like to move into the LEU market and the LEU Plus market. I know that's depending on how the government RFPs are awarded, but as far as how quickly we can deploy, when we get a final investment decision, we could have LEU production in 42 months. So if that decision came next year, we would be making LEU by 2030 and then ramping up from 2030 on to increase the level of production. And as far as milestones, some of the companies talk about technical readiness level. We're technical readiness level nine, which means we're a current producer. We're spending$60 million this summer to enhance our ability to deploy in the shortest time period possible. And we've been raising capital the past year which we now have$600 million in cash. So some of that could be used to self-fund our cost share of a future deployment.
SPEAKER_11:Enrichment companies Arano and Urenco are already taking steps towards expanding their enrichment capacity. Arano is expanding its Georges Best II enrichment plant in France, as well as working towards building new enrichment capacity in the USA at the Project Ike plant in Tennessee, while Urenco is expanding its capacity in Germany and the Netherlands, installing new centrifuges at its US plant and building a Haleo production facility in the UK. As well as talking about the exciting developments of those projects, Arano USA CEO Jean-Luc Pellea and John Paul Jones, Head of Commercial and Market Intelligence at Urenco, have this to say about some of the drivers behind these commercial initiatives and the role that policymakers can or should play. Here's Eurenko's John-Paul Jones.
SPEAKER_12:So many different ways to think about this, different policies. Let me just tackle three just simplistically. If I think about security of supply, we've spoken about that a lot over the past few years. So policies that wrap around security of supply, obviously very important for what we've done recently. going back to that first question. But I guess what we've done in taking commercial decisions is to do that in a disciplined way. So we do that with the backing of the customer. So we do that in conjunction and partnerships with the customer. So if you were to sort of remove that, that wouldn't change what we're doing at the moment. It would change what we might do in the future, but what we're doing now, all those activities, that's underpinned commercially. So on that front, not much change, perhaps, but... something for the future to look at. The supportive policies, I see that more as like turbo charging market signals. So think about subsidies that can really boost the market signal if deployed in the right way. But again, we've got a great case study in New Mexico, in the US, where we built a site using our money, but with absolute backing of the customers. That was in 2006. And then we were hit with Fukushima, and we had to sort of take that risk on, but we continue to deliver and build that out. So you can do it. You can boost the signals and get that quicker with supportive policies, but you can also do it without in an established market.
SPEAKER_11:But for Helio, there isn't an established market yet. Here's Orano USA's Jean-Luc Pelléa.
SPEAKER_13:Today for Helio, high-health cellulose and rich uranium, I will be honest, there is no market. We really hope that all the advanced reactors will be successful. But today there is no market and we as an industry will not take a risk to build a Halo plant. Hopefully there was this funding, as I said, appropriated by Congress To DOE, and we expect DOE to make, is what I said to DOE when I met with Secretary Wright three weeks ago, I said, you need to give us visibility as soon as possible. We have no time to lose, and we need to build this plant, but we won't take the risk. For LU, of course, it would be, we'll expect also some funding from the US government, but also some off-tech contracts from our customers. If we don't have off-tech contracts, there's no business plan, and therefore there's no project.
SPEAKER_11:When we talk about the nuclear fuel cycle, we tend to focus on the industrial processes needed to get uranium from rocks in the ground and turn it into electricity. But the processes that make up the fuel cycle are carried out by companies all over the world, so transport is absolutely vital to make it all happen. And in a new departure for the WNFC programme, at least in recent years, the conference turned the spotlight on to the transport sector, which is facing its own challenges and opportunities. This session was moderated by Energy Resources International President Eileen Supko, who is also the World Nuclear Transport Institute's principal representative for North America. And here's what she had to say. In
SPEAKER_09:the last session, you may have heard JP joke about fuel magically appearing at all of the various stages in the fuel cycle. Well, everyone on this panel knows that it doesn't magically appear. You actually do have to transport uranium and natural UF6, LEU, and eventually fabricated fuel to the nuclear power plant sites. Transport has always faced challenges, with too few ports and carriers willing to accept Class VII radioactive materials. On top of that, the workhorse cylinders for low-enriched uranium, the UX30-30B packaging, can no longer be used for transport in Europe, as the European competent authorities would not renew the certificate of compliance for that package after December 31st, 2024. So we're left with the DN30 package, which is a new package for transport of LEU for transport to, from, and within Europe, although the UX30, 30B package can still be used in the US, Canada, and Russia. Transport faces additional challenges, and we'll hear from our speakers about these challenges this afternoon.
SPEAKER_11:Speakers in this session took a very deep dive into these issues and more, including problems that aren't related to the nuclear nature of the transports but can potentially hit the industry hard, like US proposals to levy fees of$1.5 million per port call against any Chinese-built ships. These could be a massive burden for the smaller shipping carriers that typically carry nuclear materials. Here's Curtis Hintz, President and CEO of TAM International.
SPEAKER_04:Again, I know anyone who's heard me talk here before, I say it all the time, what makes nuclear great is it takes a very little amount of material to make a massive amount of power, and that is great for everything except logistics and shipping. We have no buying power when it comes to that.
SPEAKER_11:The conference programme also included a look at some of the up-and-coming innovations in nuclear reactor and fuel technology. Clean Core Thorium's chief technology officer, Paul Chan, described the benefits of the company's anil fuel, which blends thorium and halium, and for which a demonstration irradiation in an Indian or Romanian pressurised heavy water reactor is planned within the next two years. And two developers of molten salt reactors, Kairos Power and Terrestrial Energy, provided updates on their routes to commercialisation. Here's Iftikhar Haque, who is the Vice President of Nuclear Supply Chain at Terrestrial Energy, talking about recent progress with the company's integrated molten salt reactor, the IMSR.
SPEAKER_05:The first few months of this year have been very exciting for us. You may have seen a few announcements in the media about our company and I'm just going to share them briefly. In February, we made the announcement of our plans to site our first-of-a-kind IMSR power plant at the RELLIS campus of Texas A&M University. Our IMSR power plant at A&M can connect to the ERCOT grid of Texas, as well as it can power data centers in the region and also oil and gas facilities and wastewater treatment. And now at the end of my presentation, I would also like to share that Trestle Energy announced last month that we plan to become the first publicly traded molten salt reactor developer by the end of this year. The capital we raise from going public will go a long way in funding the acceleration of commercial deployment of Trestle Energy's IMSR technology.
SPEAKER_11:Kairos Power is adopting an iterative approach to commercialising the fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature reactor. Micah Hackett, Kairos' vice-president for fuels and materials, said the company's plant is very similar to the IMSR design but uses solid triso fuel. Terrestrials aiming for deployment of the first units in the 2030s, and an agreement with Google is one key factor here.
SPEAKER_08:Finally, I mentioned our... master plant development agreement with Google. So this was signed in October of last year. This is really our pathway toward commercialization. This is what gives us confidence that we can build out not one of these reactors, but up to seven of these reactors, and provide the electricity back to Google. So Kairos does plan to be the owner-operator of these plants. That's a very tall order, so we understand there is still a lot of growing for us to a lot of learning for us to do. But under this agreement, we will develop, construct, operate these advanced reactors. We'll sell them back the energy, ancillary services for being able to operate the plants, and we also will provide the environmental attributes to Google. This multi-plant agreement is really our technology development pathway for being able to iterate on our technology, demonstrate our strategy toward commercial deployments.
SPEAKER_11:And the part that's going to be played by electricity demand from tech companies was also highlighted as a key driver for the nuclear fuel market going forward by speakers in the final session of the conference, which focused on the outlook for nuclear markets. Dominion Energy's manager of nuclear fuel procurement, Tom Brookmeyer, explained how the utility is facing unprecedented growth and how it sees SMRs fitting into its future, alongside getting the most out of its existing fleet from uprates, life extensions and a switch to 24-month operating cycles. Here's what he told panel moderator and users Lourdes Guzman about what's driving that.
SPEAKER_07:But in Virginia, so I guess the question is, you know, what's driving the new nuclear? Is it going to be the demand signals or the environment? And really for us, it's both. We have obligations under the Virginia Clean Economy Act to substantially reduce our carbon emissions. And I think the level is zero by 2050 if that hasn't changed. But also demand growth. We have, as I showed, projections for tremendous demand growth. I mean, 27 gigawatts in the next 15 years is quite a challenge. And so we have to look at a full mix of reliable options, including SMRs.
SPEAKER_01:Continuing with you, Tom, from an economic standpoint, what are the main obstacles to the expansion of nuclear markets? Is financing or how can the cost associated with building new plants or increasing the production in the existing ones can be mitigated?
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, well, I think the phrase would be first, do no harm. And so we need to find a way to get these new I'll stick to the SMR aspect of this, but get SMRs online without harming our rate payers, without harming the financial aspects of the company. So we're looking at innovative ways to finance these new SMRs. And that's really what you have to focus on is come up with the ways to make this happen. And they're out there. I don't know the specifics of exactly what we're doing. I kind of know... Sort of. But, you know, we're looking at ways to make this happen. Again, it's with minimum risk to the ratepayer and the stockholder.
SPEAKER_11:Well, the United Arab Emirates is a relative newcomer to nuclear energy, and Mohamed Abdallah Chouka, Vice President for Fuel Development Projects and New Ventures at the Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation, ENEC, shared experiences from the project to build the Baraka plant, which recognised the importance of nuclear fuel security from the very outset of the project. Here are his thoughts on the importance of the supply chain, especially as more countries turn to nuclear to meet their energy needs.
SPEAKER_02:I think it's important that we keep supporting each other by collaboration, by exchanging, you know, the knowledge. And also, you know, from project perspective also, we need to deliver the projects. We have these projects that have really affected, you know, the landscape. So we need to fix that. So we need to deliver on time. We need to also... Access to financing is really important. I think factoring all this will help advance and meet that tripling target set by these 31 nations.
SPEAKER_11:African countries in particular see the potentially turning to nuclear in a big way over the coming years. Here's Chris Opperman, operating partner at C5 Capital, a global investment firm that's setting up a global energy security fund focused on private finance in the nuclear sector, with a particular focus on Africa.
SPEAKER_06:As I said, I think that it's not only carbon emissions and climate change, but I think two other factors come into play, and that is AI, specifically what the hyperscalers are going to do, and I think that is a big game changer. So the exponential energy demands for AI data centers and statistics are easy to come by, but we believe it's going to account for about one-third of US electricity demand growth through 2030, and it is accelerating nuclear adoption. You've got examples like Microsoft, that are securing nuclear power through long-term agreements, for instance, restarting the Three Mile Island project to meet sustainability goals, while also maintaining 24-7 baseload power, and also compute-intensive operations are going to need baseload power. By 2030, we can expect initial SMR deployment, so we are making the assumption that SMRs are definitely going to be in operation by around 2030, and the tech companies are going to be the anchor customers, providing the financial certainty needed for project completion.
SPEAKER_11:And he went on to say that technology innovations like SMRs are reshaping markets, and SMRs could be the perfect fit for Africa, where some 600 million people are still without any electricity, but the private sector is going to be a crucial player. But is the fuel cycle ready to meet the surging demand? Here are some thoughts from Jonathan Hinsey, president of nuclear fuel cycle market research and analysis firm UXC LLC.
SPEAKER_14:I don't want to leave this industry and this conference with a pessimistic view. I do know that the fuel can be made in time and when it's needed and where it's needed. And we can be the industry can rise to the challenge. But I also want to put a caveat on that and say, you know, the potential for bottlenecks is high. And, you know, we don't want to lose sight of that possibility that fuel could be a bottleneck. So keep on hoping that things keep going the right direction, but be prepared for possible challenges to come.
SPEAKER_11:So yes, there are going to be challenges and potential bottlenecks if tripling goals are going to be reached. But there is also a lot of positivity and optimism for the future. But for the last word on WNFC 2025, let's go to World Nuclear Association's own Director General, Sama Bilbao-Ileon.
SPEAKER_10:So let me just close by saying that the stars have never been better aligned for nuclear, I don't think. So we have an incredible moment for the nuclear industry. We have policymakers recognizing the essential role of nuclear. We have the finance community looking at the opportunities that exist to invest in the entire value chain of nuclear. We have large energy users that are recognizing the 24-7 clean energy clean, abundant, affordable features of nuclear power. So, truly, the ball really is on our court. It's up to us to take it. So I think that we have enormous opportunities to work together, as Tim was saying yesterday, standing shoulder to shoulder to make sure that each and every project is going to be successful. So yes, there will be a first project, and there will be a second project, and there will be a third project. And I think it is essential that we all work together to make sure that those projects are successful, because then there will be a fifth, and a tenth, and a twentieth.
SPEAKER_03:Transcription by CastingWords That's all we've got time for in this edition, but there's more information on the event in the show notes, where there are also links to sign up to our daily and weekly emails. And do feel free to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts, so you don't miss out on the next edition of the World Nuclear News.