TL;DR
Most of the world's nuclear plants burn uranium enriched to 3% to 5%. A plant in Eunice, New Mexico, has now filled its first cylinder of uranium enriched to between 5% and 10%, a fuel the industry calls LEU+, and its owner, Urenco USA, calls it the first commercial production of that material in the Western world (company claim). Stronger fuel lets the reactors already running go longer between refueling shutdowns, which cuts outages and operating costs. Some advanced reactors will burn it directly, and it can be enriched further into the higher-grade fuel many small reactor designs depend on. Fuel has been one of the quiet bottlenecks on the timetable for the next wave of reactors, and this is the first real batch of it coming off a commercial line. To see our odds on when this fuel reaches customers and small reactors reach the grid, and the timeline of breakthroughs that leads there, subscribe.
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