Centrus signs multi-year HALEU supply deal with Radiant

Centrus Energy and Radiant have signed a definitive, multi-year contract under which Centrus will supply high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) to fuel multiple Kaleidos microreactors, with deliveries beginning before the end of the decade. The deal is a contract, not a letter of intent, and it carries Radiant prepayments that fund Centrus' buildout of domestic commercial enrichment capacity.

Key facts

• Centrus and Radiant signed a definitive multi-year HALEU supply contract covering multiple Kaleidos microreactors, announced 9 September 2026.
• Deliveries begin before 2030; Centrus' first new enrichment capacity at Piketon, Ohio, is expected online by 2029.
• Radiant is making prepayments to Centrus to support the company's domestic commercial enrichment capacity program.
• The HALEU will be unobligated, US-origin fuel, cleared for national-security applications as well as commercial use.
• Kaleidos is rated at 3 MW thermal, about 1 MW electric, using TRISO fuel, helium coolant and prismatic graphite blocks in a unit that fits in one shipping container.
• Centrus' Piketon expansion is expected to create 1,000 construction jobs and 300 operating jobs in Ohio while retaining 150 existing positions.

What happened

US enrichment company Centrus Energy and California-based microreactor developer Radiant announced the definitive multi-year fuel supply contract on 9 September 2026. Under the agreement, Centrus will deliver HALEU — uranium enriched to between 5% and 20% uranium-235 — to support commercial scale-up of Radiant's Kaleidos fleet, with first deliveries before the end of the decade.

The structure of the deal matters as much as its existence. The agreement includes prepayments from Radiant to Centrus that support Centrus' program to build out domestic commercial enrichment capacity. Radiant is effectively buying into the fuel supply chain itself, mirroring the approach it has taken with the reactor.

"The contract with Radiant marks another important step in building the domestic fuel supply chain needed to support the next generation of nuclear energy," said Amir Vexler, Centrus' president and CEO. Radiant chief nuclear officer Rita Baranwal was blunter about the logic: "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."

The fuel itself carries a specific national-security selling point. The companies said the HALEU will be "unobligated" — US-origin material not subject to foreign-use restrictions — which allows it to power national-security deployments. Centrus notes its AC100 centrifuge design is the only deployment-ready, US-origin technology available for unobligated enrichment.

Why it matters

HALEU is the binding constraint on nearly every US advanced-reactor timeline. Most designs under development — microreactors, small modular reactors, next-generation test reactors — need fuel enriched above the 5% ceiling of conventional light-water-reactor supply, and no commercial source of HALEU exists in the United States today. The Department of Energy has been rebuilding that chain since 2019, when it awarded Centrus a contract to demonstrate HALEU production at the American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio, followed by a three-phase follow-on contract in 2022.

A definitive supply contract with a named reactor customer is the next rung on that ladder. Most fuel-chain announcements in this space are letters of intent, feasibility studies or conditional DOE allocations. This one commits a reactor developer to pay for fuel years before its first units deploy, and it commits an enricher to deliver it. As NNN has covered, Centrus is already scaling the Piketon plant under a $900 million DOE task order with first new capacity targeted by 2029 — the same window as this contract's deliveries.

For Radiant, the deal de-risks a deployment pipeline that stretches from remote commercial sites to military installations. The company was shortlisted by DOE in April 2025 among five companies in the first round of conditional HALEU allocations, was selected under a 2025 DOE reactor pilot program, and is in the running for US military programs including a proposed deployment at Buckley Space Force Base and the Army's Janus microreactor program. Each of those paths requires unobligated fuel — which is precisely what this contract guarantees.

The deal also widens Centrus' customer base beyond the DOE and large SMR developers, extending its HALEU book to the emerging microreactor market as it pursues prior agreements such as its supply arrangement with X-energy.

Background

The HALEU gap is a supply-chain problem the industry has talked about for a decade and only recently started to fix. Conventional enrichment plants produce up to 5% U-235; advanced reactors generally need 5–20%, known as HALEU. See NNN's HALEU explained for the full picture of why the material is scarce and who is trying to make it.

Centrus' Piketon plant is the center of the US effort. The site, which once ran as a gaseous-centrifuge complex, was revived under DOE demonstration contracts and is now being expanded to produce both low-enriched uranium and HALEU — a project expected to create 1,000 construction jobs and 300 operating jobs in Ohio while retaining the 150 jobs that existed when the expansion began.

Radiant's Kaleidos, meanwhile, has been moving from paper to hardware. The company has been working toward a first Kaleidos test in Idaho as it targets markets — remote mining, data centers, defense installations — where a containerized 1 MWe unit can replace diesel generation. Fuel has always been the long-lead item in that plan; this contract is Radiant's answer.

What's next

Watch three dates. First, Centrus' first new Piketon capacity, expected online by 2029, which anchors the delivery window in this contract. Second, Radiant's first Kaleidos test — the milestone that converts this fuel contract from insurance into inventory. Third, the Army's Janus down-select and the Buckley Space Force Base decision, where Kaleidos is competing for the defense deployments this unobligated fuel is cleared to serve. Each milestone either validates the prepayment model Radiant just bet on, or turns this contract into an early test of how flexible HALEU supply deals really are.