Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the city that helped build the atomic bomb, is set to become the site of a massive new uranium enrichment plant after Orano USA secured a roughly $5 billion development deal for a 624-acre federal parcel there. The agreement, executed by the city’s Industrial Development Board in early 2026, transfers a Department of Energy-owned tract known as Self-Sufficiency Parcel 2 to the French-owned nuclear fuel company for a facility expected to span approximately 750,000 square feet, according to the city’s public development announcement.
The project, internally called “Project IKE,” arrives at a moment of urgency for the American nuclear fuel supply chain. In August 2024, President Biden signed the Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act, cutting off the country’s largest foreign source of enriched uranium and forcing the industry to find domestic alternatives. Orano already operates the only commercial uranium enrichment facility in the United States, a centrifuge plant in Eunice, New Mexico. The Oak Ridge project would dramatically expand that footprint and, for the first time on U.S. soil at commercial scale, produce high-assay low-enriched uranium, or HALEU, the advanced fuel grade required by many next-generation reactor designs.
What the public record shows
The land deal and investment figure are documented across several layers of government records. A resolution in the Industrial Development Board’s agenda packet references the DOE’s deed transfer of SSP-2 to the board and its subsequent conveyance to Orano Enrichment USA LLC or an affiliate. The resolution describes the planned complex as a “nuclear processing facility and ancillary facilities,” formalizing the pathway from federal ownership to local control to private operation.
Federal funding is flowing in parallel. The U.S. Department of Energy has announced a $2.7 billion initiative to restore American enrichment capacity, structured as three task orders of $900 million each over roughly a decade. Orano is among the companies selected for that program, which covers production of both traditional low-enriched uranium and HALEU. However, the publicly available documents do not specify how much of the $2.7 billion is earmarked for Project IKE versus other vendors or sites…