D.C. Cook earns back-to-back Utilities Service Alliance Optimizer Award

D.C. Cook nuclear power plant has received the Utilities Service Alliance Optimizer Award for the second consecutive year, with the recognition presented at the 2026 USA Executive Summit. The repeat win marks a notable milestone for the plant's supply chain organisation, which has undergone a sustained transformation in how it manages supplier relationships and pursues operational improvement.

A team confronting changing conditions

The plant's supply chain function comprises 61 staff members who collectively manage relationships with hundreds of suppliers. According to reporting by ANS Nuclear Newswire, the team reached a point where it acknowledged that established methods were no longer delivering the outcomes the station required. Rather than making incremental adjustments, leadership chose to pursue a more fundamental shift in organisational culture.

The transformation centred on four stated priorities: accountability, partnership, learning, and continuous improvement. The team worked to strengthen ties with its supplier base and to extend the principles of continuous improvement beyond internal boundaries, embedding them across the broader network of organisations that support plant operations.

Significance of consecutive recognition

Plant supply chain leadership has drawn a distinction between winning the award once and winning it twice. A single award, in their framing, can reflect a discrete innovation or a strong performance in a given period. A second consecutive award, by contrast, is taken as evidence that the underlying culture has genuinely changed — that continuous improvement has become an enduring characteristic of how the team operates rather than a project-specific achievement.

The Utilities Service Alliance Optimizer Award is presented to member organisations that demonstrate measurable progress in supply chain performance. Receiving it in back-to-back years positions D.C. Cook as a reference point within the nuclear supply chain community for how cultural and structural change can be sustained over time.

Broader implications for nuclear supply chain professionals

The D.C. Cook experience offers a concrete example of a mid-sized nuclear plant supply chain team navigating the pressures facing the wider industry. With a relatively lean workforce managing a large and complex supplier network, the station's approach — prioritising supplier partnership and cross-organisational accountability — reflects themes that resonate across the sector as plants seek to maintain reliability while managing cost and schedule pressures.

The 2026 USA Executive Summit, at which the award was presented, serves as a forum for nuclear utilities to share operational and supply chain practices. D.C. Cook's recognition at that event underscores the relevance of its model to peers across the United States nuclear fleet.

Centrus Ships First New Centrifuge to Piketon as HALEU Expansion Advances

First Centrifuge Delivered from Tennessee to Ohio

Centrus has shipped the first AC-100M centrifuge produced under its expansion programme from its Oak Ridge, Tennessee manufacturing centre to the Piketon, Ohio enrichment plant. The company described the shipment as the start of a phase in which completed centrifuges will move from Tennessee to Ohio for final assembly, with manufacturing rates expected to grow over time.

The Piketon plant first became operational in 2023 under a Department of Energy (DOE) contract initiated in 2019, when Centrus constructed an initial cascade of AC-100M centrifuges to demonstrate production of high-assay, low-enriched uranium (HALEU). The facility has been producing HALEU under DOE contract since late 2023, drawing on components manufactured in 2019 and earlier years, with more than four million machine-hours of operation recorded across the centrifuge technology.

Contracts and Investment Underpinning the Expansion

In June, Centrus was selected by the DOE for a USD 900 million task order to expand the Piketon facility to include commercial-scale HALEU production. The award also carries options, at the DOE's discretion, for up to USD 170 million to produce and deliver HALEU directly to the Department, bringing the total potential task order value to USD 1.07 billion.

In January, Centrus announced a USD 560 million investment to expand and modernise its Oak Ridge Technology and Manufacturing Center, converting it into a high-rate production plant capable of supporting the manufacture of thousands of advanced centrifuges. The company has also drawn on Tennessee's USD 70 million Nuclear Energy Fund, administered through the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development, to support the Oak Ridge work.

Scope of Expansion and Timeline

Beyond HALEU, the Piketon expansion is intended to produce low-enriched uranium feed material for the HALEU cascades, generate additional LEU quantities for the commercial market, and address national security requirements. The first new enrichment capacity resulting from the expansion is expected to come online in 2029.

The programme is projected to create 1,000 construction jobs and 300 new operating positions in Ohio, while retaining the 150 roles already in place at Piketon when the expansion began. The Oak Ridge facility is described as the only advanced centrifuge manufacturing plant in the United States.

Supply-Chain Context for Advanced Reactors

HALEU, enriched to between 5% and 20% uranium-235, is required as fuel for many advanced reactor designs currently under development. No commercial domestic source of HALEU exists in the United States, and the DOE has been actively supporting efforts to establish a home-grown supply chain for the material. Centrus President and CEO Amir Vexler noted that completing the first centrifuge and establishing the associated supply chain represented significant milestones for the company and for domestic enrichment capability.

Framatome Opens EUR 30 Million Chromium-Coating Facility at Paimboeuf

New Facility Targets Fuel Cladding Industrialisation

Framatome has opened a EUR 30 million (USD 33.5 million) industrial pilot facility at its Paimboeuf site in France dedicated to chromium-coating zirconium alloy cladding tubes used in nuclear fuel assemblies. The process applies chromium via physical vapour deposition and is designed to reach an annual output of more than 100,000 coated tubes.

The facility is intended to complete the industrialisation of the coating process and validate its robustness under conditions representative of full-scale production. Industrial qualification is scheduled for completion by the end of 2026, with series production targeted to begin in early 2027.

The Paimboeuf site already manufactures zirconium alloy components for fuel assemblies supplied to nuclear operators in France and internationally. The cladding tubes produced there form the first confinement barrier around nuclear fuel, and the addition of chromium-coating capability is described by Framatome as extending the site's strategic role in the nuclear fuel value chain.

PROtect E ATF Technology Background

The chromium-coated cladding is central to Framatome's PROtect Enhanced Accident Tolerant Fuel (PROtect E ATF) technology, developed in collaboration with CEA, the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission. The technology can also incorporate chromium oxide-enhanced uranium pellets at operator request.

Accident tolerant fuel designates a class of technologies aimed at improving the safety and performance of nuclear fuel through new cladding materials and fuel pellet designs. Framatome's PROtect technology is reported to improve oxidation resistance, enhance mechanical performance at elevated temperatures, and reduce hydrogen generation in loss-of-coolant scenarios. Development has received support from the French Recovery Plan and the United States Department of Energy.

Operational Milestones Across Multiple Reactors

Reactor irradiation of PROtect fuel rods began in 2019 at the Gösgen plant in Switzerland and at the Vogtle plant in the United States. In 2021, the first complete PROtect E ATF fuel assembly was loaded at the Calvert Cliffs plant in the United States. From 2023, four lead fuel assemblies were introduced into the French pressurised water reactor fleet as part of a joint programme with EDF.

In 2024, the technology completed a third consecutive 18-month fuel cycle at the Vogtle plant, representing the first full lifecycle of operation for the world's first full-length PROtect E ATF fuel rods. During the same year, the Gösgen plant recorded operation of full-length PROtect E ATF rods above 60 GWd/tU, described as a first for any ATF technology globally.

Framatome states that more than ten years of research and operational experience across six reactors worldwide underpin the move toward industrial-scale production at Paimboeuf.