The company building America’s uranium supply from scratch

Rebuilding US uranium enrichment ahead of the 2028 import ban

General Matter is rebuilding American uranium enrichment from a clean sheet. The US once led the world, then let its capacity decay and ran reactors on blended-down Russian warheads. Advanced reactors need fuel enriched just under 20%, which only Russia sells commercially, and an import ban takes effect in 2028. Nolan's bet is that a new plant, engineered in-house the way Tesla builds, can supply that fuel and undercut incumbents who have not redesigned enrichment since the 1950s.

Takeaways

• General Matter aims to make HALEU domestically. No US company makes the higher-enriched fuel advanced reactors need. General Matter, founded at the end of 2023 and just over 200 people strong, wants to produce HALEU first, then cut its cost.
• Russia is the only commercial HALEU supplier. Advanced reactors need fuel enriched just under 20%. Congress banned Russian uranium imports from 1 January 2028, leaving reactor developers without a Western supplier. Nolan's company is racing that deadline.
• Higher enrichment allows smaller, factory-built reactors. Grid reactors run on 3-5% enrichment and need a large vessel, refuelling every 18 to 24 months. Going to 19-20% unlocks a much smaller core, which is what makes factory-built and modular reactors possible.
• Nuclear stalled because it never reached scale. Nolan blames a failure to reach economies of scale and a cost-plus ecosystem with no pressure to cut prices, not Three Mile Island or Chernobyl. At Vogtle, 20% of the overruns were interest, with mortgage rates near 18% in 1981.
• The US lost enrichment through path dependency. The US once held over 90% of global enrichment, then imported Russian warheads under Megatons to Megawatts. Nolan says the cost edge now comes from a clean-sheet redesign that captures decades of technology improvement the incumbents never took.
• The NRC's bad reputation is undeserved. Commercial fuel sales go through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which Nolan says has been great to work with, while government sales and R&D reactors can use Department of Energy paths. He says the tech community's criticism of the agency is not deserved.

How nuclear fuel is made

1. Uranium is mined and milled into U3O8, a concentrate.
2. Chemical conversion turns the concentrate into a gas.
3. Enrichment separates isotopes, raising the U-235 share from 0.711% in natural uranium.
4. The gas is converted back into a solid.
5. The solid becomes pellets, and the pellets become fuel assemblies.

General Matter's build