A newly reopened US reprocessing plant is shipping its first batch of uranium after a 16-year hiatus.
enCore Energy Corp. has produced the first shipment of reprocessed uranium produced at the Rosita plant in South Texas.
- The plant last processed uranium in 2008.
- The announcement comes about a year after the plant was officially reopened, and about four months after production began.
- The batch of uranium is expected to arrive at the next stop, a conversion facility, this week.
The Rosita plant is acting as a central processing site for a handful of sites across the state, turning raw uranium ore into yellowcake, a partially refined ore that still needs to be converted into a higher grade before it can be used as fuel for a reactor. The plant is licensed to ramp up to an 800,000-lb yearly uranium output.
Driving the growth: Interest in the resurgence of nuclear energy is way up, and the uranium market has noticed. Uranium prices are up ~86% YoY and are currently sitting at ~$95/pound after trending up for more than five years from local lows in the mid-2010s.
enCore isn’t alone in taking advantage of soaring prices. Uranium producers across the supply chain are racing to increase production and meet the growing demands of the nuclear industry.
Keep it coming: In addition to announcing the first shipment from Rosita, enCore also revealed that it has signed its fifth contract with a fourth customer to supply yellowcake. The company is contracted to supply 4.3M lbs by 2032, which it says is less than 50% of its planned output.
Rosita isn’t the last operation getting new life under enCore this year. “With Rosita underway, we are now moving aggressively to re-start the Alta Mesa Plant which we expect will commence production as planned in Q2/2024,” enCore CEO Paul Goranson said in a release.
