Jed Dorsheimer and guest Amir Vexler, CEO of Centrus Energy Corp., dig into the realities of nuclear energy’s comeback, focusing on the supply chain bottlenecks, shifting U.S. policy, and the technical evolution of reactor designs. Their conversation offers a clearer look at how energy independence, market pressures, and new technologies are reshaping the nuclear sector’s future.
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Podcast Transcript
Jed Dorsheimer
All right. Welcome. My name is Jed Dorsheimer, and I will be your host to the Plugged In podcast brought to you by William Blair. This is a podcast that we talk about all things energy, and today we're going to be talking about nuclear. Today is September 12th, 2025, and I'm lucky enough to have Amir Vexler who's an industry veteran and CEO of Centrus Energy.
Now please go to our website, WilliamBlair.com for any important disclosures. And with that, maybe, Amir, you've been around the nuclear industry for a while, and I don't mean that insult you from an age perspective, but I do think age and wisdom, particularly when it comes to nuclear, is important.
And we're seeing a lot today in terms of expectations, talk about a nuclear renaissance or nuclear revival. Maybe if we could just provide a little bit of background in terms of what you do in the industry, your experience, and then, you know, your thoughts on where we are, either from a U.S. or from a global perspective. I think both are following a similar trend in terms of recognition that physics matters in terms of nuclear use in the energy markets.
01:18
Amir Vexler
Thank you, Jed. So, first off, as you mentioned, Centrus Energy. I'm representing Centrus Energy here as the CEO.
Centrus has a long history in the industry. We have lived through several iterations of our predecessors, and at some point, we were actually owned by the Department of Energy. We have fulfilled a really important role.
At some point in time, we were the dominant enricher of uranium, which is used by all of the reactors in the United States and actually is used by most of the reactors around the world. We were enriching, for the United States reactors and a lot of the European reactors have used our enrichment as well.
We've gone through some several iterations in our business. We were privatized. We went through a bankruptcy at some point in time, and now we have reemerged in the last few years as a broker trader, who is at the cusp, now, of going back to enrichment and enriching uranium for the existing commercial reactors, which is under 5% enrichment.
And, also positioned to enrich, what we call high-assay low enriched uranium, which is really targeted at the advanced reactors that are emerging out there.
02:40
Jed Dorsheimer
So, Amir, you know, one of the challenges with nuclear is we have all of these acronyms and, you know, it gets complex and confusing. Maybe if we just take a step back from supply chain perspective - you start with raw uranium, you're going to convert that to gas, and that's going to go into a centrifuge that's then going to upconvert or enrich, to a certain level, as you mentioned, 5% or 20% or even 90% for weapons or military use.
Where does Centrus play in terms of a role, and those will become rods or that becomes the fuel to go into a reactor that produces the energy and turn a turbine to create the electricity.
As I think about Centrus, or our listeners do, where does Centrus play a role in that supply chain?
What do you do, and what do you have that's different than your competitors?
03:37
Amir Vexler
Yeah, so as I mentioned, almost all the reactors in the world require the enrichment of uranium, meaning the concentration of the fissile uranium 235 isotope.
And, that's done currently with a centrifuge technology. So, Centrus is really, as you outlined, Centrus is, in my view, probably in the most restrictive, critical part of the fuel cycle, which is the enrichment of that uranium.
We have uranium, as you pointed out, mined out of the ground, converted into gas, then it is enriched in centrifuges, and then it is reconverted and fabricated into fuel, and then it goes into a reactor. So, really we are at the sort of most pinched and constrained part of the fuel cycle right now, which is the enrichment.
Now, we can talk about why its constrained, and what are the reasons behind it, and what the future holds for it, but I'll stop there and see where you want to take the conversation.
04:35
Jed Dorsheimer
Yeah, let's get into that a little bit. I just, you know, I think it's important to note that we have this fleet of reactors, and there's a risk that we can't even keep their existing fleet running. I think as you've pointed out, we need to increase by basically fourfold or three and a half fold just to keep our existing fleet if we're not going to be importing and, dependent on other countries, which we are almost entirely dependent on today.
Is that right?
05:08
Amir Vexler
Yes, about two thirds of our enrichment needs in the United States are imported from other countries. Whether it's Russia, Europe or as of late, China.
05:18
Jed Dorsheimer
Did I hear that right? So, Russia and China are where we're importing our fuel to run our nuclear reactors from?
05:24
Amir Vexler
In large part, yeah. And Europe as well, between those three. So, really outside of Centrus, there are four enrichers in the world, and they're all, to various degrees, state owned.
And so, you have, obviously, the Chinese enrichment that's owned by China, the Russians that are owned by the Russian state. You have a consortium of Europeans that own Urenco, which is the UK, Germany and the Netherlands. And, obviously, you have the French company around that is majority owned by French state.
And so, how do we get here? That is a great question. I mean, there's different ways to answer it, but, I think ultimately in my mind it boils down to an energy policy in the United States that perhaps did not properly value the existence of American supply chain in the United States. I think the government is trying to correct that now.
And there is a lot of incentives that are that are pouring through the Department of Energy and standing up on the American supply chain. But the simple answer, as I see it, to your question is, we really did not, for many years, have a policy that valued having that independence as you allude to it.
06:48
Jed Dorsheimer
And we are now though, right? Secretary Wright seems to be pretty supportive of this technology and the recognition that we need firm baseload from an electricity perspective in this country. Is that correct?
07:03
Amir Vexler
Yeah, I mean, judging by the Secretary's confirmation hearing, he was very specific about the “we need to have,” and I'm paraphrasing him, obviously, that “we need to have our own capability, not a different state-owned company that runs centrifuges here.
We got to have our own capability.” That was his statement paraphrased. And, I agree with him. I think most of us do agree with him. So, I think we're marching in the right direction if he's leading the way here.
07:32
Jed Dorsheimer
Where do you come out on the different reactor technologies? I know there's advanced reactors.
Most of the reactors that are out there today, which I think there's 94 or 96, there's a few of them that are being restarted. So that number is going to increase marginally, but not significantly. And those are mostly Generation II either boiling water or pressurized water reactors. And these are the big things, you see the concrete stack with the steam coming out of them.
But, there's also this new class of reactors known as advanced, or some of these use liquid metal and most of them use this, HALEU or high acid, low enriched uranium, which I think you're providing. Could you tell us a little bit about the differences in terms of what are the opportunities, what are the potential drawbacks of these different reactors and how they might be being used today?
08:29
Amir Vexler
Sure. So for many decades, the standard design that the entire world agreed on, predominantly, with few minor exceptions, is the use of a light water reactor, a dominantly pressurized water reactor. And, that is a fuel that is enriched under 5%. So, for many decades, all around the world, it's been fairly standardized. You know, the French have their own designs, the Koreans, Japanese… variations of either a Westinghouse or a General Electric design, but ultimately it's all very similar and these are the large reactors.
As of late, there's been a great push to start developing number one, small modular reactors. And there's different value offering there. Depending on who you talk to, you will hear things like, “Hey, we can mass produce these things in the modular way, and so it will be much cheaper to scale up, and the cost of putting one of these together is going to be much cheaper.”
And then you also hear things in favor of advanced reactors, which are typically not light water reactors. They use different fuel, different cooling mechanism for the fuel. Some of the value offering they have is that they have a much better concentration of power, better utilization of fuel.
Naturally, they also tout a different kind of "walk-away" safety from the reactor. They operate under a different safety regime and definitely bring tangible value.
Wait a minute - a different “safety regime” such that they can't melt down or we can't have these runaway events associated with those?
Yeah, that is correct. It's also like a loss of coolant type event.
In some of these reactors, it would not be possible. Some of them are not pressurized and just certain accident scenarios are not possible.
10:19
Jed Dorsheimer
So, if I've been led to believe, that nuclear, you know, this nuclear technology comes with this radioactive waste and green goo that's going to go through my body and kill me. That might be false, particularly if you can't even have a meltdown with these newer reactors.
10:38
Amir Vexler
That is correct. I mean, those were run as test reactors, some of them in the 50’s or 60’s, some of those concepts were proven. And so, that's absolutely right. They have a different sort of safety regime associated with them. And certain scenarios are not possible.
10:55
Jed Dorsheimer
I saw a stat- so, unfortunately, I live on an airplane a lot, as I'm sure you probably do too.
And so, I did the calculation and I saw that if I live next to Seabrook’s nuclear plant up in New Hampshire - just in my annual travel on a plane, I'm getting 430 times more radiation being on that plane than I am living next to that plant. And that's not to mention going in and getting any X-rays or MRIs as I get older and need to figure out what's wrong with me. And so, I think that we're holding that industry to this standard around this Linear No-Threshold model, or the Elara model, which doesn't really seem fair. It seems like we've almost stifled this technology, for whatever reason.
11:43
Amir Vexler
Yeah. No, that's correct. I think there's been a lot of folks that opposed it, for whatever reason. There's been a lot of campaigns to, sort of, smear it, in my opinion, at least from what I've seen.
But ultimately, I ask myself the question, how do we get to a point where an industry, like the nuclear industry, has not been thriving in the U.S.? And during most of my career and has not been thriving, it has been slowly sort of shutting down.
It was, like, in a “controlled, shut down” mode. And I think the reason why we got there, in my opinion, is again, I'll go back to sort of like an energy policy that values what nuclear power generation brings to society, whether it's no emissions, whether it's the safety that's associated with it, whether it's the stability that it brings to the grid and the predictability that it brings to the grid…
I mean, these things are starting to be valued now, in my opinion, but particularly after we all realized that we can’t get, you know, sort of cheap gas from Russia because it kind of makes us depend on it, particularly the Europeans. I mean, we're seeing European countries enforcing moratorium on a nuclear build, and there are some sites that have been to that have been designated for decommissioning in Europe that are restarting them again.
And you yourself alluded to a couple here in the U.S., as well.
So, there's definitely - the winds are changing there. There is a different view of the value that nuclear brings to the market. And we're seeing a lot of positive push from the government. Let's not kid ourselves. This is the most support there has ever been from the government, both from Republicans and the Democrats.
13:20
Jed Dorsheimer
Now, I helped write U.S. energy policy Under Secretary Moniz. Secretary Moniz was bull on nuclear.
However, I think if I look at the timing of then versus now, that was the infancy of renewables. And I think renewables held this promise, wind and solar, of getting to a marginal cost that approached zero for the technology because the fuel was seen with the photons coming from the sun. Sunlight was seen is ostensibly free. Or the wind that would be blowing - we were harnessing this free fuel. The variability from renewables has actually, it can now be seen that there's a true cost.
Do you think that's what's changed between then and now? Because we have had pro-nuclear energy secretaries before, and now we have another one. Does it feel like it's something more than that today? Or, do you think that this is more administration based that we're going through this trend?
14:21
Amir Vexler
I think the answer would be different depending on where you are in the world. I've done a lot of business in Europe, and I truly believe that, in Europe, it was driven by geopolitical reasons where there was a large dependance on, sort of, Russia being the provider of gas.
And once that really started to be tampered with, then countries essentially saw that they don't have the energy security that they need. And nuclear was really a simple and effective way to get that security again. Here in the U.S., I agree with you. I think, ultimately, we have we have the ability to compare different electric bills from different regions and in different states, and we can compare and contrast things that are working and things that are not working.
And I think, ultimately, this is just my personal view, the American consumer and, obviously the politicians in power, now are reflecting that sentiment. The consumer basically says, “Well, whatever it is you told me is going to be the value by having all these renewables, it's either not being delivered or I'm not really willing to pay for it.”
15:31
Jed Dorsheimer
Yeah.
I call this “pain at the plug.” I think that's going to be the new narrative going into midterms around people's electricity bills. Not pump, you know, where we usually talk about what gas prices are, but, the focus on electricity prices, which all seem to be escalating
15:49
Amir Vexler
Right. And couple that with the historic new demand that's out there, that's already starting to creep into the grid.
I mean, that creates…
15:57
Jed Dorsheimer
From the data centers?
15:58
Amir Vexler
Absolutely, yeah.
15:59
Jed Dorsheimer
And reshoring?
16:00
Amir Vexler
Absolutely. So, that creates an issue that puts nuclear in a very attractive position, whether you are in the U.S., Europe or anywhere in the world.
16:08
Jed Dorsheimer
And to be clear, the exhaust stream from nuclear is water vapor?
16:12
Amir Vexler
Exactly.
16:15
Jed Dorsheimer
So, it's one of the cleanest technologies that exists. Maybe one could even argue that it's a renewable.
16:21
Amir Vexler
It's no emission, I know that. I've not really looked at the definitions of renewable and nonrenewable, but there's no emission.
16:28
Jed Dorsheimer
Well, this is exciting.
16:29
Jed Dorsheimer
I mean, you're in an area where there seems to be a bottleneck, in terms of the fueling, that also seems to be in high demand, in terms of electricity needs.
You know, I think I mentioned earlier, I think baseload is going to become the new clean as we think about how to address the problems and shore up the grid, at least domestically here.
And, as you noted, the rest of the world seems to be waking up to this. Belgium, I think, lifted its ban. Germany, I think, announced that it's restarting some of its, scuttered nuclear plants. And, I think you guys just signed a deal in South Korea, which continues to move ahead. And then, of course, China building 29 new reactors this year alone.
So, it does seem to be more of a renaissance in the nuclear sector.
17:20
Amir Vexler
Absolutely. I think everywhere you look there is new excitement, new moratorium lifted, new interest, new startups popping up with new technologies and exciting new things that they bring to the market.
From my perspective, and, obviously, we focus on the enrichment part of it. From my perspective and Centrus’ perspective, we're agnostic to who the winner is.
We're agnostic to what technology it is, whether it's advanced reactor or small modular reactor or large light water reactor, it doesn't really matter. We know that all of them would require enrichment. And, so, we're positioning ourselves to be able to provide that demand, whether it's under 5% LEU or under 20% HALEU, or if there's national security needs above that, then we stand ready to support that, as well.
18:11
Jed Dorsheimer
When we hear the difference between LEU or HALEU or SWU, can you help reconcile some of these acronyms? And what these mean? And, you know, is there any difference in terms of the capacity to enrich LEU or HALEU? And then, you're selling that in SWU pricing for standardized work units, could you help us understand these different terms?
18:40
Amir Vexler
So enrichment, obviously, is the process of separating concentrating uranium-235 isotope in the uranium gas mixture.
We measure the capability of doing that by the amount of energy that we put into the process. And for short, that's called a separate work unit. And that really is the measure of enrichment.
That's how we trade it, how we sell it, buy it. And, whether it's enrichment for Low Enriched Uranium, which is under 5%, or whether it's enrichment for High-Assay Low-Enriched uranium, HALEU, under 20%, it is really technically the same process under a different configuration. So, I would argue that there's not a whole lot that has changed on the market, other than the fact that it would it just would take a little bit of time for somebody, hopefully Centrus is the first ones, to make available commercial HALEU to the market.
As you probably know, we are operating HALEU cascade, which is a demo cascade under a contract with the Department of Energy. So, we are already producing HALEU at small amounts, and we are making plans to scale that up.
19:59
Jed Dorsheimer
Amir, thanks so much for coming and joining me today. I'll have to have you back so we can check up on how this fuel enrichment is expanding, as well as the nuclear sector as a whole, in terms of the development.
So, thank you.
20:16
Amir Vexler
Thank you, Jed.