Centrus lands Radiant fuel contract as microreactor supply chain takes shape

Centrus Energy has secured a multi-year fuel contract with Radiant that links two challenges facing advanced nuclear developers: supplying reactors with fuel and financing the capacity to produce it. The agreement covers high-assay, low-enriched uranium, or HALEU, for multiple Kaleidos microreactors and includes Radiant prepayments toward Centrus’ domestic enrichment expansion.

Centrus disclosed the agreement in a September 9 securities filing, saying deliveries are scheduled to begin before the end of the decade. Centrus’s September 9 release does not specify the contract’s value, fuel volume, pricing, prepayment amount or a specific first-delivery year. Those omissions leave the size of the addition to Centrus’ backlog—and its financial contribution—unquantified.

The filing says Centrus issued the announcement on September 9, matching the company website and the heading of the attached release. That attachment also carries a September 8 PRNewswire dateline. The conflicting dateline does not establish an earlier announcement date.

For Radiant, the agreement adds another domestic fuel source as it develops Kaleidos for commercial and national security customers. It follows an August agreement with Standard Nuclear for fuel fabrication, putting the latest contract in the context of a broader effort to secure the steps between uranium supply and a reactor ready for service.

Radiant also describes a 300,000-square-foot manufacturing, fueling and storage campus in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The company says it manages fueling, refueling and spent-fuel storage at its own facilities. Those activities extend the supply chain beyond obtaining enriched uranium and fabricating fuel to preparing reactors for service and handling fuel through their operating lives.

Customer prepayments join a larger enrichment expansion

The Radiant commitment fits a financing approach Centrus outlined in July: combining government support, private capital and customer contracts to expand uranium enrichment. Prepayments bring customer funding into that effort ahead of future fuel deliveries, although the announcement gives no payment schedule or measure of how much of the expansion Radiant will support.

On July 1, Centrus said it had signed a contract finalizing a $900 million Department of Energy task order supporting commercial-scale HALEU capacity. The fixed-price contract includes options, exercisable by the department, for up to $170 million in HALEU purchases, bringing its value to $1.07 billion if all options are included. The optional purchases are distinct from the underlying $900 million award.

Centrus said its initial expansion would include 12 metric tons of annual HALEU production capacity alongside capacity to serve an existing $2.4 billion low-enriched uranium backlog. That backlog figure concerns LEU; it does not measure the newly announced Radiant agreement. Centrus said the pace of its modular expansion would depend on customer demand and available capital.

The company expected its first new capacity to come online by 2029. That provides a broader production timetable alongside the Radiant delivery window, but Centrus’s September 9 release does not identify which capacity would fulfill the contract.

“The contract with Radiant marks another important step in building the domestic fuel supply chain needed to support the next generation of nuclear energy,” Centrus President and Chief Executive Amir Vexler said in the partnership announcement.

Enrichment and fabrication address different fuel needs

The two Radiant supply agreements concern different stages of preparing reactor fuel. Centrus will provide HALEU through its enrichment business. Standard Nuclear’s August 20 agreement covers fabrication of TRISO fuel to Kaleidos specifications for planned deployments through the early 2030s. Securing enriched uranium and arranging its manufacture into reactor-specific fuel are complementary commitments.

Radiant Chief Nuclear Officer Dr. Rita Baranwal described the reasoning directly: “You can't deploy nuclear reactors without fuel, so we have approached our fuel supply the same way we have approached the reactor: build it in parallel, and don't depend on any single path.”

Radiant describes Kaleidos as a 1-megawatt microreactor transportable by land, sea or air, designed to provide up to five years of power before refueling over a 20-year operating life cycle. Those are design characteristics, rather than evidence that a commercial fleet has achieved those operating periods.

In its August release, Radiant said Kaleidos was undergoing a full-scale test campaign at Idaho National Laboratory’s DOME facility. The campaign uses the same reactor design and fuel specifications intended for customer deployments, making it a relevant milestone between fuel procurement and commercial service.

Radiant also reported a commercial agreement with Equinix for 20 units and selection by the Department of the Air Force and Defense Innovation Unit to develop and operate a microreactor at Buckley Space Force Base. These commitments give context to its fuel procurement, although the Centrus announcement does not allocate fuel to particular customers or deployments.

Fuel origin matters for national security uses

Centrus says its U.S.-origin technology and U.S. manufacturing supply chain will make the enrichment supplied to Radiant “unobligated,” meaning it can be used for national security applications. That is relevant to Radiant’s intended defense business as well as its commercial plans.

Centrus also describes its AC100 centrifuge as the only deployment-ready U.S.-origin technology available for unobligated enrichment. That characterization is the supplier’s claim.

Storage work continues as commercial production is prepared

Centrus enters the commercial expansion with production experience from its government demonstration program. In July, it reported completing the final 900 kilograms of HALEU UF6 required under that contract in mid-June, two weeks ahead of schedule, bringing cumulative production to more than 1,900 kilograms.

The same July announcement said Centrus and the Energy Department had signed a three-month, $15 million extension for HALEU storage. All production required under the existing demonstration contract had been completed. The extension therefore covered continuing storage work; it did not extend the production requirement or establish that commercial fuel supply had begun.

At that time, Centrus intended to operate its existing HALEU cascade commercially while new capacity was built. It was still working with the Energy Department on agreements enabling that transition, including a long-term lease extension for its Piketon, Ohio, plant. The Radiant announcement does not establish that those arrangements have been completed.

The next milestones are progress on that commercial transition, the planned capacity expansion and Radiant’s reactor testing, followed by the start of contracted deliveries. Centrus identifies government funding, future demand and successful execution of its expansion projects as risks. The supply agreement connects a customer to that build-out; the delivery schedule still depends on execution.

Correction: An earlier version described September 8 as the announcement date. Centrus’s Form 8-K says the release was issued September 9; the release’s September 8 dateline differs from its heading and the filing. The article now distinguishes those dates.