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. 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.
| Headquarters | Stoke Poges, United Kingdom |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1971 |
| Ownership | state |
| Roles in the chain | enricher, deconversion |
Position in the chain
Downstream
Enriched uranium from this company feeds fuel fabrication, and from there 373 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 | 309 |
| 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 | 5,100tSWU/yr | operating |
| Urenco USA, National Enrichment Facility | enrichment | USA | 4,650tSWU/yr | operating |
| Urenco Capenhurst | enrichment | GBR | 4,500tSWU/yr | operating |
| Urenco Gronau | enrichment | DEU | 3,600tSWU/yr | operating |
| Urenco Capenhurst HALEU line | haleu | GBR | not disclosed | planned |
Urenco in context
In enrichment Urenco holds 17,300 of the 68,076 tSWU/yr of world enrichment capacity in 2025 (25%), ranking 2nd of the 4 named operators in the source.
Urenco has 6 facilities on record in 4 countries (United Kingdom, Netherlands, Germany and United States): 5 operating and 1 planned, licensing or under construction. The oldest operating one was commissioned in 1973.
Share of each stage it works in
| Stage | Company | World total | Share | Rank | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Enrichment | 17,300tSWU/yr | 68,076(2025) | 25% | 2 of 4 | World Nuclear Association, Uranium Enrichment |
How these are worked out: shares and ranks use the world totals cited in the table, and only named companies are ranked (unnamed or country-level entries in a source are not). A facility with no stated capacity is counted as a facility but adds nothing to a capacity figure. Vendor figures count operating units where this company is the recorded reactor vendor; ages count from the start-up year on record, and build times run from construction start to grid connection, as on the age and build-times pages.
Sources
- Urenco, company source
- Global Nuclear Power Tracker, Global Energy Monitor, August 2026 release , CC BY 4.0 · retrieved 2026-09-06
How these sources are used, including the corrections applied on top of them and what is deliberately left blank · download the underlying data