Centrus Energy has shipped the first new centrifuge built at its Oak Ridge, Tennessee manufacturing plant to Ohio — a milestone in the company's multibillion-dollar expansion of U.S. uranium enrichment capacity.
The machine is the first output from a production line Centrus restarted in December 2025. Completed Tennessee-built centrifuges will be shipped to Ohio for final assembly, with the manufacturing rate expected to grow over time as the company scales toward commercial HALEU production.
From a single cascade to a fleet
Centrus has been reliably producing high-assay low-enriched uranium since late 2023 from an existing centrifuge cascade at Piketon, a demonstration line whose components date to 2019 and earlier. The expansion announced last year adds new centrifuge cascades at the Pike County site, designed to lift HALEU output and meet other enrichment needs.
The company has described the Ohio buildout as a major expansion of uranium enrichment capacity, with the first shipment of new machines marking a milestone in that effort.
Bringing the supply chain in-house
In October 2026, Centrus acquired Westerman Holdings, LLC, bringing a key centrifuge component supplier in-house. The company said the deal secures a best-in-class manufacturer with an existing and growing business while diversifying both its manufacturing capacity and its revenue base — a hedge against the single-site, single-product risk that has historically constrained enrichment projects.
Demand is already contracted
The buildout is unusual in being financed against signed offtake rather than speculative capacity. Centrus holds USD 5.4 billion in customer contracts and commitments to purchase LEU and HALEU from the new capacity, spanning deals with Oklo, Antares and Radiant's Kaleidos microreactor programme. Oklo's prepayments for future HALEU deliveries are explicitly earmarked to help fund construction of the new capacity.
Timing matters. Oklo's deliveries are scheduled to start in 2029 from the American Centrifuge Plant, and Centrus has framed the definitive agreements as evidence it can meet substantial upcoming commercial HALEU demand. Whether the Tennessee line can ramp fast enough — and qualify every component for commercial service — is now the central supply-chain question for the U.S. advanced reactor pipeline.
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