France's state-owned company Orano announced a plan to build a large enrichment facility in the United States. The facility will be located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

The company apparently plans to use the funds allocated by the US Department of Energy to boost domestic enrichment capacity.

In 2008, Orano's predecessor, Areva, had a plan to build an enrichment facility, known as Eagle Rock Enrichment Facility, EREF, in Idaho. The project, however, was abandoned in 2011 and Orano USA withdrew the license in 2018.

INS Arighat, India's second nuclear-powered submarine, was commissioned into the Indian Navy on 29 August 2024 (see also a post on X). The ceremony took place in Visakhapatnam. The submarine joins the lead ship of this class, INS Arihant, which entered service in October 2016.

INS Arighat (also Arighaat or S2) was built at the Ship Building Centre in Visakhapatnam. It was launched in November 2017.

Japan Nuclear Fuel Limited (JNFL) officially announced that it has postponed the completion of the Rokkasho reprocessing plant. The plant is expected to begin operations in FY2026 (which ends in March 2027). This is the 27th delay since the construction began in 1993. In December 2022, the plant was projected to be completed by mid-2024.

This newly announced delay, assumed to be of two and a half years, is required to address serious issues raised by Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA). One major reason for the slow pace of the process has been the need to complete a review of the "ground model" for the earthquake-resistant design attempted by JNFL. The NRA is concerned about the project being "schedule-driven".

The completion of the MOX fuel fabrication plant, previously scheduled to start in the "first half of fiscal year 2024," has been postponed as well, with the new date in FY2027.

UPDATE: JNFL has published process charts for both the reprocessing plant and the MOX facility.

Reprocessing plant

MOX fabrication facility

Nuclear Fuel Services, a subsidiary of BWXT, has been awarded a contract by the US National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to conduct a domestic uranium enrichment pilot plant study (see also the ANS story). The cost of the year-long contract is $3.3 million. This study, which is part of the NNSA's Domestic Uranium Enrichment (DUE) program, should "inform the acquisition approach for a DUE pilot plant that can be repurposed for High Enriched Uranium (HEU) production."

This effort is distinct from the program that seeks to establish the production of High-Assay LEU (HALEU) based on the American Centrifuges operated by Centrus. Instead, this program is based on the work of the Domestic Uranium Enrichment Centrifuge Experiment (DUECE) that has been carried out at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory since 2016. This work focuses on the development of a small centrifuge that can be used to produce LEU to fuel tritium producing nuclear reactors (see Tritium and Enriched Uranium Management Plan Through 2060). In addition, the NNSA "hope[s] to leverage this pilot plant for future Highly Enriched Uranium production for naval nuclear propulsion." The pilot plant is expected to begin LEU operations "by approximately 2030." It will also be required to demonstrate the capacity to produce HEU with enrichment of 93% or higher.

The Request for Information, released in July 2023, indicated that the capacity of the pilot plant after conversion for HEU production is expected to be about 50,000 SWU/year. The production-scale capacity is likely to be considerably higher.

According to the inter-governmental agreement between Russia and China signed in June 2018, Russia will supply fuel for China's CFR-600 reactor during its entire life cycle. The text of the agreement is available at the Russian government's portal (in Russian).

According to Article 5.2 of the agreement, Russia will supply "fuel assemblies containing uranium or uranium-plutonium fuel pellets ... during the entire operational lifetime of CFR600."

In a contract signed in January 2019, Russia committed to supply HEU fuel for the reactor during the first seven years of its operation. The HEU fuel was delivered in 2022 and the reactor began operations in December 2023.

Article 5.2 of the agreement also includes Russia's commitment to supply equipment and provide assistance with setting up production of "fuel assemblies containing uranium-plutonium fuel pellets" in China. It is possible that the fuel fabrication facility that this cooperation will set up in China will be producing fuel for the second CFR-600 reactor, which is being built at the same site. It is not entirely clear from the agreement whether this facility will be producing MOX fuel pellets (presumably from the plutonium separated by China) or whether Russia will remain the source of fuel pellets (and, accordingly, of plutonium).

The agreement appears to assume that the MOX fuel supplied by Russia will include Russia's plutonium. Russia uses reactor-grade plutonium in its own breeder program and it is highly likely that the fuel pellets for China's CFR-600 will use reactor-grade plutonium as well.

Importantly, the agreement contains provisions that directly prohibit the use of the materials or technologies that will be supplied to China for any military purpose, confirming the obligations in the umbrella agreement on cooperation and Russian export control regulations. According to Article 8.2,

Nuclear materials, equipment, special non-nuclear materials and related technologies received by the People's Republic of China in accordance with this Agreement, as well as nuclear and special non-nuclear materials, facilities and equipment produced on their basis or as a result of their use:

Shall not be used to produce nuclear weapons and other nuclear explosive devices or to achieve any military purpose;

Note that this provision covers the "equipment ... and related technologies" received by China as well as "nuclear materials and equipment produced [by China] on their basis." This directly prohibits the use of plutonium that will be produced by both CFR-600 reactors for any military purpose.

Under an agreement between the State of Idaho and the U.S. government, reached in 1995, U.S. Department of Energy and U.S. Navy provide the state with information about spent fuel shipped to the Idaho National Laboratory. The chart above and the table at the end of the message summarize this information as of the end of 2023.

The information is published by the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality as a document "Cleanup Progress at the INL under the 1995 Settlement Agreement". The document is regularly updated and contains information about two most recent calendar years. Here are archived copies of the document with information for 2019-2020 and 2021-2022, and 2022-2023. Earlier information, published in 2018 and 2019, used data provided by the Snake River Alliance.

The government of Japan released The Status Report of Plutonium Management in Japan - 2023 report, which details its plutonium holdings. According to the report,

As of the end of 2023, the total amount of separated plutonium both managed within and outside of Japan was approximately 44.5 tons, approximately 8.6 tons of which was held domestically and the rest of approximately 35.8 tons was held abroad.

This is a decrease of 0.6 tons from the total of 45.1 tons that Japan reported having in 2022. The amount of plutonium held in Japan decreased as well, from 9.3 tons in 2022. This is due to 0.6 tons of plutonium in MOX fuel loaded into the Takahama Unit 3 reactor.

Of the plutonium stored abroad, 14,097 kg are stored in France (14,113 in 2022) and 21,735 kg - in the United Kingdom (21,757 in 2022).

The Department of Energy announced that it is unlocking $2.7 billion to boost domestic enrichment capacity. The DoE issued a request for proposals "to purchase low-enriched uranium (LEU) from domestic sources." The funds will be available to "new enrichment facilities or projects that expand the capacity of existing enrichment facilities."

One project that should be able to use these funds is the expansion of the capacity of the Urenco USA plan in Eunice, New Mexico. Centrus, which uses US centrifuge technology, has been focusing on HALEU production, but would be eligible for these funds as well. Yet another potential beneficiary of this program is Global Laser Enrichment (GLE), which welcomed the news.

UPDATE: France's Orano announced a plan to build an enrichment plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

In 2019, Russia and China signed a contract for the supply of HEU fuel for the first seven years of operation of the CFR-600 fast neutron reactor. The reactor, located at Xiapu, started operations in December 2023. The second reactor, which is under construction at the same site, is expected to begin operations in 2026.

Fast neutron reactors can produce high-quality weapon-grade plutonium in the uranium blanket surrounding the active zone. China has maintained that this material will be used exclusively in its peaceful program. And indeed, the terms of the fuel supply agreement appear to restrict the use of the plutonium produced when the reactor uses the HEU fuel supplied by Russia.

Two key documents that regulate the issue are the Russian Regulations on the Export and Import of Nuclear Materials, first issued by the Russian government in 2000 and last amended in February 2023, and the Agreement on Cooperation in the Area of Peaceful Use of Nuclear Energy, which Russia and China signed in 1996.

According to paragraph 6 of the Regulations, export of materials like HEU to nuclear weapon states is allowed only if

exported items and items produced based on them will not be used for the production of nuclear weapons and other nuclear explosive devices or for any military purposes.

The Regulations requires the recipient state to provide written guarantees of peaceful use, which is then assessed by Rosatom (paragraph 8).

Article 4 of the Agreement on Cooperation contains similar language:

The parties assume that the items of nuclear export transferred under this Agreement will not be used for the production of nuclear weapons and other nuclear explosive devices or for any military purposes.

These two documents clearly prohibit the use "for any military purpose" of the plutonium that would be produced by any reactor that uses HEU fuel supplied by Russia.

UPDATE: The agreement on cooperation regarding CFR-600 specifies that Russia will provide MOX fuel or MOX fuel fabrication technology as well, further prohibiting the military use of plutonium produced by the CFR-600 reactors.

The UK government awarded £196 million to Urenco to build an enrichment facility to produce high-assay LEU (HALEU) at the Capenhurst site (Urenco announcement). The facility is expected to begin operations in 2031. According to the BBC report, "the facility will have the capacity to produce up to 10 tonnes of the fuel per year."