Centrus ships a centrifuge, Kairos makes Flibe, ARPA-E picks fuel projects

Three nuclear fuel-cycle stories from October 29, 2026, all about materials rather than reactors: the machine that enriches uranium, the salt that cools one reactor design, and the advanced fuels ARPA-E has picked for development, most of them containing recycled transuranic elements.

Centrus ships its first new centrifuge from Oak Ridge

Centrus Energy's Oak Ridge, Tennessee, plant has completed the first new centrifuge for the company's multibillion-dollar expansion of its uranium enrichment capacity and was shipping it on October 29, 2026, per the release Centrus filed with the SEC that day. Centrifuges made in Tennessee go to Ohio for final assembly and will be grouped into cascades there, with the first new capacity expected online in Ohio in 2029. Centrus says this milestone, and securing what it calls "a complete and complex manufacturing supply chain," both came ahead of its previously announced year-end target.

The release's headline says Centrus "Begins Shipping Centrifuges"; its body counts one, and three of the officials quoted in it describe the shipment as centrifuge components. Centrus says the manufacturing rate will grow over time; it restarted centrifuge manufacturing in Oak Ridge in December 2025 and in January 2026 announced a $560 million investment to turn the site into a high-rate manufacturing plant.

The Ohio end is Piketon, where Centrus's existing cascade has produced high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) since late 2023, per the release. Our September report on Centrus's HALEU contract with Radiant found that what Centrus can deliver, and when, runs through Piketon. Centrus said on July 1, 2026 that it had finalized a $900 million DOE task order to deploy commercial-scale HALEU capacity there. The new release says the expansion covers low-enriched uranium for the existing reactor fleet, HALEU for next-generation reactors and enrichment for national security needs.

Kairos makes 8 tonnes of Flibe for its biggest salt test

Kairos Power has finished the Flibe production run for its second Engineering Test Unit, ETU 2, producing approximately 8 metric tons of the molten salt coolant at its Molten Salt Purification Plant in Elmore, Ohio, the company said on October 29, 2026. The salt goes to Kairos's Manufacturing Development Campus in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for what Kairos calls the world's largest Flibe system, to be tested early in 2027.

The world's largest Flibe test will run partly on used salt. Kairos will combine the new batch with Flibe previously used in ETU 1, the non-nuclear hardware demonstration for which it made approximately 14 metric tons in 2023, to deliver approximately 16 metric tons for ETU 2. This campaign, Kairos says, used upgraded processing and purification to reach the purity levels required for nuclear coolant applications, added steps to filter the salt and monitor its chemistry during production, and ran more than half of its salt transfers remotely.

The lessons feed a Salt Production Facility now under construction at Kairos's Albuquerque campus, which will make high-purity, lithium-7-enriched Flibe for the company's commercial reactors; Kairos broke ground on its Hermes 2 demonstration plant in Oak Ridge in April 2026. Lithium-7 is the scarce ingredient. Of the 1960s Oak Ridge salt that Natura Resources received in September, an Oak Ridge National Laboratory group leader said, per ANS: "The salt represents the only near-term domestic source of a significant supply of lithium-7 enriched FLiBe."

ARPA-E's HORNIG program selects eight fuel projects

ARPA-E announced on October 29, 2026 the selection of eight projects to receive up to a combined $50 million through its High-performance Optimized Recycled Nuclear Isotopes for Gen IV reactors (HORNIG) program, to develop approaches to fuel fabrication, testing and qualification that cut fuel costs and speed up commercial deployment of advanced reactors. Five of the eight, per ARPA-E's project list, develop fuels containing transuranic elements: Oregon State University's nitride fuel, Oklo's metallic fuel for sodium-cooled reactors, Standard Nuclear's TRISO particles, Idaho National Laboratory's chloride fuel salt, and Texas A&M University's thorium-based fuel salt. Sandia National Laboratories and Exodys Energy will analyze costs, feedstocks and scale-up across the program's fuel concepts.

The listed amounts add up to about $44.9 million by our arithmetic. Three projects are listed at $7,000,000 each, and Standard Nuclear's at $6,999,984. One of the three is Westinghouse's PowerBlock, an additively manufactured metallic fuel for the current fleet and advanced reactors; beyond the program's name, neither ARPA-E's description nor Westinghouse's release mentions transuranics or recycled material. Westinghouse describes PowerBlock as "targeting 24-month fuel cycles at thermal power levels above 4,200 megawatts."

The money is not yet committed. "Selection for award negotiations is not a commitment by DOE to issue an award or provide funding," ARPA-E's release says, and DOE may cancel negotiations and rescind a selection for any reason in the meantime. Texas A&M's account already calls its project a $5.4 million DOE grant, announced by Deputy Secretary of Energy James P. Danly on October 29 during a campus visit, and says the work brings in researchers from Savannah River National Laboratory and industry partner Natura Resources, the same company that took delivery of the Oak Ridge salt.