US regulator clears Framatome to make advanced reactor fuel at higher enrichment

On 26 June, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told the French-headquartered nuclear fuel company Framatome it could raise uranium-235 enrichment at its Richland, Washington plant from 6.5% to under 10% and start fabricating TRISO fuel particles there. Until that letter, no commercial-scale U.S. site had been licensed to combine TRISO fabrication with enrichments above the 6.5% light-water-reactor ceiling (World Nuclear News).

The previous enrichment limit on Framatome's Richland materials license was 6.5%, a level set for the conventional light-water reactor fuel cycle. Several next-generation designs (high-temperature gas-cooled reactors, certain microreactors, fast-spectrum test reactors) need fuel in the 5% to 20% band the industry calls high-assay low-enriched uranium, or HALEU. As long as the Richland plant's license held at 6.5%, it could not make fuel for those designs at commercial scale.

The TRISO authorization rides alongside the enrichment change. TRISO, short for tristructural isotropic, is a particle form: a uranium-bearing kernel (uranium oxycarbide or uranium dioxide) sealed in successive layers of porous carbon, dense carbon, and silicon carbide. The ceramic shells keep fission products contained at temperatures well beyond what conventional fuel pellets survive, which is why several advanced reactor designs route their fuel through them. The NRC's amendment lets Framatome combine that particle form with enrichments above the old 6.5% ceiling in one licensed facility (Framatome).

Framatome already has a customer pipeline. In September 2024, the company and Standard Nuclear, a U.S. advanced-reactor fuel startup, formed a joint venture to scale TRISO production at Richland. According to the company's announcement, equipment commissioning is underway and the venture is on schedule to begin metric-ton-scale TRISO production, with a starting target of 2 tonnes per year. The plan is to begin manufacturing uranium-dioxide powder and TRISO particles at Richland in 2027 (Federal Register notice).

Two tonnes per year is a small number in nuclear terms. A single large light-water reactor loads roughly 20 tonnes of enriched uranium per refueling. The 2-tonne figure is a starting target, not a ceiling: Framatome's filing describes it as the joint venture's initial output, with later scale-up tied to advanced-reactor deployment schedules.

A second domestic supply line is taking shape alongside the Richland effort. On 27 July 2026, Lightbridge Corporation (Nasdaq: LTBR) and Quadrant Nuclear Industries (QNI) signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on long-term supply of HALEU fuel for next-generation reactors (Lightbridge press release, GlobeNewswire distribution). QNI's planned Vanguard facility at Idaho National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy research site, is designed to produce up to 18 metric tons of HALEU per year at full capacity, using a dry conversion process for uranium hexafluoride feedstock that the company says is meant to bypass several steps in the conventional conversion chain.

The 2-tonne and 18-metric-ton figures are not directly comparable. The first is a starting annual output for an existing joint venture at an existing licensed site. The 18-metric-ton figure is designed capacity, not operating output: the Vanguard facility is a planned site, not a producing one, and the Lightbridge agreement is a framework MoU, not a binding offtake or fuel delivery contract. The Richland amendment puts both projects on the same side of the regulatory line.

The amendment does not approve any specific advanced reactor. Several of the designs that would consume this fuel are still working through separate NRC design reviews on staggered timelines. Framatome Fuel Business Unit senior vice president Lionel Gaiffe called the Richland approval "the latest step in reshaping the nuclear fuel market for the next generation of reactors." The fuel-fabrication threshold has moved. The reactor-licensing thresholds, one per design, have not.