Who enriches uranium
Four organisations enrich essentially all the world's uranium: Rosatom, Urenco, CNNC and Orano. Together they hold about 99% of the 68,076 thousand SWU of annual world capacity, and Rosatom alone holds roughly 43% of it. This is the tightest chokepoint in the nuclear fuel chain and the one with the sharpest geopolitical consequences.
Natural uranium is 0.71% U-235, the isotope that fissions readily, and 99.3% U-238, which does not. Almost every commercial reactor needs that fraction raised to between 3% and 5%.
The two isotopes are chemically identical. The only thing separating them is a mass difference of about 1.3%, and every enrichment technology ever deployed is a way of exploiting that difference repeatedly. Gaseous diffusion, the original method, pushed UF6 through porous barriers thousands of times in series and consumed staggering amounts of electricity, the French Georges Besse I plant used roughly 3% of France's electricity and had three dedicated reactors built to power it.
The gas centrifuge replaced it and uses about 2% as much energy per unit of work. Urenco commercialised it under the 1970 Treaty of Almelo, and that single technical shift is why enrichment is cheap today and why the industry consolidated around so few operators: a centrifuge plant is capital-intensive, export-controlled, and only economic at scale.
Enrichment is measured in Separative Work Units, which quantify the effort of separation rather than a mass of product. A SWU is not a tonne of anything; it is a unit of work, and the amount needed depends on how much U-235 you are willing to leave behind in the discarded tails.
The strategic weight of this stage became obvious in 2022. Russia supplied roughly a fifth of US enrichment services, and the US banned Russian uranium imports in May 2024 with waivers running to 2027. Rebuilding Western capacity is now a stated policy objective in both the US and Europe, but centrifuge plants take the better part of a decade to build.
The tightest stage in the chain. Rosatom holds about 43% of world capacity, and the top three operators hold roughly 88%. Enrichment technology is export-controlled under the Nuclear Suppliers Group because the same centrifuges that make reactor fuel make weapons material if you keep going, which means new entrants face not just capital cost but non-proliferation politics.
What this stage costs. In August 2026 the enrichment indicator stood at US$ 200.00 per SWU spot, and US$ 183.00 under long-term contract. See fuel market prices for the forty-year series and a worked cost breakdown of a single reactor core.
World capacity by operator
| Operator | tSWU/yr | Share | Bar |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rosatom | 29,133 | 42.8% | |
| Urenco | 17,300 | 25.4% | |
| CNNCestimated | 13,789 | 20.3% | |
| Orano | 7,500 | 11.0% | |
| Others (JNFL, INB) | 355 | 0.5% |
World total 68,076 tSWU/yr (2025). Source: World Nuclear Association, Uranium Enrichment.
Facilities
Outside the commercial chain
6 further plants enrich uranium and are not classed as civilian by the survey the table above draws on: 3 military, 2 whose purpose the sources will not classify, 1 dual-use. They are excluded from the world capacity total, which counts commercial supply, and their combined capacity is a rounding error against it. That is the point rather than a caveat: enrichment for weapons has never needed to be large. Two safeguarded plants in Iran are classed civilian and appear in the table above, with the status the source gives them, which is uncertain.
| Plant | Country | Classified as | Safeguards | Capacity | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Heping (Plant 814) | China | dual-use | no | 230tSWU/yr | operating |
| Yongbyon enrichment plant | North Korea | uncertain | no | 65 to 70tSWU/yr | operating |
| Kahuta (Khan Research Laboratories) | Pakistan | military | no | 30 to 45tSWU/yr | operating |
| Kangson | North Korea | uncertain | no | 30 to 35tSWU/yr | operating |
| Ratehalli (Rare Materials Plant) | India | military | no | 17 to 31tSWU/yr | operating |
| Gadwal | Pakistan | military | no | not published | operating |
Classification, safeguards status and capacity are the International Panel on Fissile Materials' own, from its June 2026 survey. Where it gives a range or a parenthesised figure, that is reproduced rather than reduced to a single number. Warhead counts for the states involved are on nuclear weapons stockpiles, and what the enrichment levels mean is under enrichment levels.
Sources
- World Nuclear Association, Uranium Enrichment · retrieved 2026-09-06
- International Panel on Fissile Materials, detailed enrichment facilities table
- World Nuclear Association, Uranium Enrichment
- World Nuclear Association, US Nuclear Fuel Cycle
How these sources are used, including the corrections applied on top of them and what is deliberately left blank · download the underlying data