The only facility in the U.S. that's licensed to make the special fuel needed to power the next generation of nuclear power plants is fully up and running, thanks in part to the work of dozens of members of Portsmouth, Ohio, Local 575.

"There hasn't been an American-based uranium enrichment startup since the 1950s," said Fourth District International Representative Austin Keyser, a former business manager of the local. "This is a project our IBEW team worked hard to secure."

The facility, Centrus Energy's American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, recently achieved full-scale production of high-assay low-enriched uranium, or HALEU, a version of the naturally radioactive element that's able to power traditional and advanced nuclear reactors. Centrus built its production facility on the site of the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy and under a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

In the decades following the Manhattan Project, the U.S. held the world's top spot for nuclear fuel production. Local 575 Business Manager Joe Dillow noted proudly that generations of IBEW members had worked at the diffusion plant to enrich uranium used in the country's first nuclear power plants, as well as in the deterrent atomic weapons that helped the U.S. win the Cold War.

"They dedicated their lives not only to working there but to helping to protect the nation and the world," Dillow said.

Members of the local continued to work there even after the plant closed in 2001, he said.

"Through funding from the government, they were cleaning the place up and looking to maintain some type of industry there," Dillow said. "We thought the place was just going to be decommissioned and torn down."

By 2013, thanks largely to lower-cost imports from countries such as Russia and China, American industrial-scale uranium enrichment had stopped. At the same time, growing power consumption was leading to increasing interest in the development of small modular reactors, or SMRs, nuclear power plants designed to run on HALEU and be relatively easy to deploy.

Over the last several years, Congress allocated nearly $1 billion in funding toward SMR development and HALEU production, under such laws as the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, both signed by President Joe Biden.

The federal investments arrived just as Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 disrupted the world's nuclear fuel supply chains. Congress passed a gradual ban on the purchase of nuclear fuel from Russia that's set to take full effect in 2028.

Meanwhile, IBEW signatory utilities in the U.S. and Canada, in collaboration with their respective nuclear regulatory agencies, continue to work on taking SMRs from the drawing board to reality by 2030. (Read more in the July 2023 Electrical Worker.)

"It was critical to get this job done right," Keyser said about the construction and staffing of the Piketon plant, "which is why Centrus chose to employ IBEW workers and others from the unionized trades."

Full production at the plant got underway in October 2023, with the 16 40-foot-tall centrifuges now able to make about a ton of HALEU per year.

"We are proud to be at the forefront of the effort to restore a domestic nuclear fuel supply chain, which wouldn't be possible without the partnership of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers" and other unions, the company said in a statement.

According to Centrus, the technology is so efficient that about three tablespoons of the fuel is enough to generate a lifetime of electricity for one person. The Energy Department has estimated that several tons of HALEU will need to be produced annually to satisfy commercial and national security requirements.

The Ohio facility can hold nearly 5,800 centrifuges, and there's room on the site for Centrus to build a second plant. The company aims to gradually expand to produce 6 tons of HALEU a year.

Such growth, Keyser said, would mobilize hundreds more IBEW and other union workers in Ohio.

"It helps having people in power who understand how important it is to keep good-paying union jobs in Appalachia, and to help build up communities," Dillow added.

"This plant not only safeguards our national security," said Fourth District International Vice President Gina Cooper, whose jurisdiction includes Ohio. "It also creates quality IBEW jobs for our members and drives prosperity in the surrounding community—a true trifecta of positive impact."

Dillow said there are other exciting plans for the 3,800-acre site.

"Even if just one or two of those go, it's going to be really, really good for us," he said noting that major projects over the last few years have already helped to nearly double the size of Local 575's membership to about 640.