Urenco

Urenco is a GBR company active in the nuclear fuel chain as enricher, deconversion.

A tri-national enrichment consortium created by the 1970 Treaty of Almelo, owned one third each by the UK government, the Dutch government, and a joint venture of the German utilities E.ON and RWE. It pioneered the gas centrifuge over gaseous diffusion, which is why Western enrichment costs collapsed. Four plants — Almelo, Gronau, Capenhurst and Eunice, New Mexico — give it roughly a quarter of world capacity and the only significant non-Russian, non-Chinese capacity outside France.

Position in the chain

Mining Conversion Enrichment Fabrication HALEU Reprocessing

Downstream

Enriched uranium from this company feeds fuel fabrication, and from there 375 operating reactors across these types. Heavy water reactors are absent because they run on natural uranium and skip enrichment entirely.

Reactor type	Operating units
Pressurised water reactor	311
Boiling water reactor	45
Gas-cooled reactor	9
Light water graphite reactor	7
Fast reactor	2
High-temperature gas reactor	1

Facilities

Facility	Stage	Country	Capacity / output	Status
Urenco ChemPlants, Capenhurst	deconversion	GBR	10,000tU/yr	operating
Urenco Almelo	enrichment	NLD	not disclosed	operating
Urenco Gronau	enrichment	DEU	not disclosed	operating
Urenco Capenhurst	enrichment	GBR	not disclosed	operating
Urenco USA, National Enrichment Facility	enrichment	USA	not disclosed	operating
Urenco Capenhurst HALEU line	haleu	GBR	not disclosed	planned

Sources

• Urenco — company source
• Global Nuclear Power Tracker, Global Energy Monitor, August 2026 release — CC BY 4.0 · retrieved 2026-09-06