UEC names National Security Advisory Council to support conversion plans

On Tuesday, Uranium Energy Corporation announced that it had selected four members for its National Security Advisory Council, a consulting body that will provide guidance for the company's recently formed subsidiary, the United States Uranium Refining & Conversion Corporation (UR&C).

Two of the chosen members served as admirals in the U.S. Navy, while two have experience as administrators with the National Nuclear Security Administration:

• Admiral James F. Caldwell, former director of the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program.
• Admiral William K. Lescher, former vice chief of naval operations.
• Tom D'Agostino, former undersecretary of energy for nuclear security and NNSA administrator.
• Neile Miller, former acting administrator and principal deputy administrator of the NNSA and former acting undersecretary of energy for nuclear security.

UEC noted in its announcement the government's use of unobligated uranium-that is, uranium produced within the United States without foreign equipment or material-for such national security-related purposes as fuel for naval nuclear reactors.

Spencer Abraham, chair of the company's board of directors and former U.S. secretary of energy, said, "Today, domestic conversion is the essential link between American uranium and the billions of dollars being invested in new U.S. enrichment capacity. The leaders on this council ran the very programs that rely on that supply, and their guidance will be invaluable as the nation expands it."

No additional council members have been named.

Front-end ambitions: UEC was established in 2003. Its initial ventures focused on uranium exploration and mining; currently, it operates in situ recovery projects in Wyoming and Texas and has launched exploratory projects on land it holds in Canada's Athabasca Basin, including the Roughrider project for conventional mining.

In July 2024, the company entered a partnership to connect its mining projects to a later stage of the front end of the nuclear fuel cycle: It joined with Fluor Corporation to explore a concept for a conversion facility capable of producing 10,000 metric tons of uranium hexafluoride (UF₆) annually. Just over a year later, in September 2025, UEC announced that it had formed UR&C, a subsidiary dedicated to developing a uranium conversion facility based on the work conducted with Fluor.

Since that announcement, UR&C has submitted a letter of intent to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to pursue licensing for its facility under 10 CFR Part 40. The NRC issued a docket number for the project in March 2026, and in May, it held an initial preapplication meeting with UR&C staff.

An October 2026 corporate presentation from UEC stated that the company expects to produce a Class IV cost estimate-typically used for assessing a project's feasibility-for the UR&C facility by mid-2027.

The conversion landscape expands: UEC seeks to extend its operations into a stage of the fuel cycle that one company dominates in the United States: The Metropolis Works facility operated by Solstice Advanced Materials is the country's only uranium conversion plant.

In February, to process a backlog of nearly $2 billion in orders, Solstice announced that Metropolis Works would produce an estimated 10,000 metric tons of UF₆ in 2026, an increase of about 20 percent from its planned production for 2024.

However, Solstice and UEC are not the only companies aiming to expand the country's conversion capabilities:

• FluxPoint Energy-Announced as a venture during the CERAWeek conference in March 2026, FluxPoint intends to build a conversion plant with several small, modular conversion units as opposed to one large unit, with the first unit capable of producing about 2,500 metric tons of UF₆ per year. FluxPoint submitted its letter of intent to pursue licensing for its plant to the NRC in April 2026; the company plans to start production between 2030 and 2031.
• Raven-Flint Nuclear Corp.-In August 2026, Raven-Flint became one of 12 companies selected in the second round of the Department of Energy's Nuclear Energy Launch Pad program, an initiative designed to support the work of private nuclear developers. It currently is developing what it calls Torch, a uranium conversion pilot plant that will produce UF₆ without using elemental fluorine. The company expects Torch to enter production in 2028 and produce 500 metric tons of UF₆ annually.
• Nucleon Fuel-Beating FluxPoint for the title of the newest comer to the domestic conversion field, Nucleon Fuel is a subsidiary of Canadian small modular reactor developer Nucleon Energy. The new company was announced in May 2026, the same month that it held an initial preapplication meeting discussing its proposed conversion facility with NRC staff.

Just as UEC did in its Tuesday announcement, both FluxPoint and Raven-Flint specifically mention the production of unobligated uranium on their respective websites.

In an August 2026 report focusing on enriched uranium supply and demand, the Government Accountability Office stated that the NNSA is holding a stockpile of unobligated uranium sufficient to meet national security needs into the 2040s. However, also in August, the NNSA issued a request for information for its uranium acquisition efforts. In that RFI, the NNSA stated that its long-term annual needs for unobligated uranium could amount to "approximately four million pounds of unobligated U₃O₈, converted to approximately 1,500 metric tons uranium of UF₆," and that it might initiate efforts to obtain that unobligated uranium in the 2030s.

UEC referred to the NNSA's RFI in its October 2026 corporate presentation.