Our History

Our history begins in 1992, when the Treaty of Washington paved the way for Urenco’s centrifuge technology to be deployed in the United States.

The company originally planned to operate in the state of Louisiana, but due to overwhelming community support, was built in Eunice, New Mexico. Because the original plant was planned in Louisiana, the official licensee is Louisiana Energy Services, or LES; but our operations are based in southeastern New Mexico and we do business as Urenco USA - The National Enrichment Facility.

Urenco USA was the first new nuclear project in the U.S. in almost 30 years. We invested around $5 billion our facility, which was one of the largest construction projects in the state of New Mexico.

Our facility was the first project to be issued a combined construction and operating license by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Construction began in December 2006 and was completed in three phases. During construction, Urenco USA logged over 17 million work hours without a Lost Time Incident (LTI), a testament to our strong safety culture.

The site began producing enriched uranium in June 2010 and the first customer delivery was completed in March 2012. After 12 years of operation, Urenco USA has never missed a customer delivery and, in May of 2022, our facility celebrated our 500th safe and successful product shipment.

As it stands today, our site has sixty-four cascades online and produces about 4.3M SWU per year, which is sufficient capacity to meet nearly one-third of the annual U.S. demand for enrichment services.