General Matter Files First NRC License for US Uranium Enrichment Plant

General Matter, a Kentucky-based nuclear fuel startup backed by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, submitted its first license application to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission on September 28 for a commercial uranium enrichment plant at the former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant site, the company said. The filing is the first formal regulatory step toward what General Matter describes as the first US-owned commercial enrichment facility in decades, as Washington moves to rebuild a domestic fuel supply chain it lost to Russia and Europe.

A 1,000-page filing under Part 70

The application, which runs more than 1,000 pages, was submitted under 10 CFR Part 70, the NRC’s standard licensing pathway for facilities handling special nuclear material. It includes an integrated safety analysis, an environmental report, a fire hazards analysis, a decommissioning funding plan, physical security protocols and emergency response plans for the proposed plant.

General Matter split its licensing strategy into two parts. The application filed this week covers low-enriched uranium (LEU) and LEU+ production only. A second application, covering high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) — the higher-enriched fuel needed for most next-generation small modular and advanced reactor designs — is planned for submission in 2027. Company officials have said splitting the filings is meant to let construction and initial licensing proceed faster, rather than waiting for a combined review.

Why Paducah, and why now

The plant is planned for roughly 100 acres of the former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, a Cold War-era enrichment site in western Kentucky that the Department of Energy leased to General Matter. Site preparation — clearing, grading, soil improvement and utility work — is already underway ahead of a licensing decision. The company has said it expects to reach commercial-scale enrichment by the end of the decade.

General Matter was one of four companies the DOE selected in October 2024 to help build a domestic HALEU supply, alongside American Centrifuge Operating and Orano Federal Services. The department committed $900 million to General Matter over ten years through milestone-based task orders. The push follows the 2024 Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act, which phases out US utilities’ purchases of enriched uranium from Russia’s Rosatom — for years the dominant global supplier of HALEU and a major supplier of ordinary LEU to US reactors.

Founded in 2024 by former SpaceX engineer Scott Nolan, General Matter raised $50 million in a round led by Thiel’s Founders Fund, which also secured Thiel a board seat. “We will enrich uranium at commercial scale by the end of the decade,” the company said in announcing the filing. “We will end reliance on foreign adversaries for the nuclear fuel powering almost 20% of our grid.”

Filling a gap in the fuel cycle

Nuclear fuel already supplies close to a fifth of US electricity, but nearly all of the enrichment work behind it is done outside the country. The only commercial enrichment plant currently operating on US soil, Urenco USA’s facility in New Mexico, is majority foreign-owned. No US company has held a commercial HALEU license, which is why utilities and reactor developers have had to rely on Russian material or limited government-run supply while a domestic HALEU industry is built from scratch.

That gap has become more pressing as the DOE and NRC weigh new licenses for advanced reactors that require HALEU fuel, most of which have no domestic supplier lined up yet. General Matter’s Paducah filing, alongside separate US moves to lock up uranium supply from mines abroad, forms part of a broader push to rebuild the fuel cycle end to end — a theme that has also run through this year’s uranium-mining agreements in Niger and the NRC’s review of restarting Three Mile Island’s remaining unit. Rare-earth and critical-mineral supply chains face a similar reshoring push, as detailed in our look at why rare earths matter for energy and defence.

Sources

• General Matter, “Filed,” company announcement, September 28, 2026 — filing details, company statement.
• World Nuclear News, “General Matter submits licence application for enrichment plant,” September 29, 2026 — regulatory and project details.
• Nuclear Engineering International, “General Matter to build Kentucky enrichment plant under DOE lease” — site and DOE lease background.
• ANS Nuclear Newswire — DOE HALEU award background.

Illustrative image. Photo: Nuclear Regulatory Commission from US, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons — source