The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded $900 million each to three companies to help expand the country’s uranium-enrichment capabilities.

The Jan. 5 announcement is the latest step in a long-running effort to expand domestic production of the fuel that generates approximately 19% of U.S. electricity — almost all of which is imported. If the widely held ambitions for expanded nuclear generation come to fruition, much more enriched uranium will be needed.

DOE intends its awards to expand capacity for the low-enriched uranium (LEU) used in most commercial reactors and to foster innovation and supply chain development in the high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) that some next-generation nuclear reactors will use. The $2.7 billion will be disbursed as milestones are reached over the next decade.

The recipients are American Centrifuge Operating, to create domestic HALEU enrichment capacity; General Matter, to create domestic HALEU enrichment capacity; and Orano Federal Services, to expand domestic LEU enrichment capacity.

DOE also awarded $28 million to Global Laser Enrichment to continue development of its next-generation uranium enrichment technology.

The announcement came two weeks after American Centrifuge’s corporate parent, Centrus Energy, announced it had begun domestic centrifuge manufacturing to support commercial LEU enrichment activities at its Piketon, Ohio, facility. Centrus said it has secured $2.3 billion in contingent LEU sales and is working toward future HALEU production.

Orano said Jan. 5 that the DOE award would support development of its planned uranium enrichment facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn., which has an anticipated price tag of $5 billion. The company has named it “Project IKE” after President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” speech to the U.N. in 1953. It expects to submit the facility design to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission soon and hopes to build it quickly enough to begin LEU production in 2031.

The company has supplied enriched uranium to the U.S. reactor fleet for 40 years from production facilities in France and intends to continue this with production in Tennessee.

“Orano is the only Western company in the last 15 years that has successfully built and operated a new, modern, commercial-scale gas centrifuge uranium enrichment facility with our completion of the Georges Besse II facility in 2011. Plus, we are currently performing a 30% capacity expansion of this facility,” said François Lurin, executive vice president of Orano’s Chemistry and Enrichment business. “Our objective is to apply the best practices from that construction and expansion to the benefit of the Project IKE uranium enrichment facility in Tennessee.”

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the awards would reduce U.S. reliance on foreign suppliers as the country works toward energy security: “Today’s awards show that this administration is committed to restoring a secure domestic nuclear fuel supply chain capable of producing the nuclear fuels needed to power the reactors of today and the advanced reactors of tomorrow.”