In a move underscoring America’s drive for nuclear fuel sovereignty, Centrus Energy and Palantir announced an AI-powered partnership aimed at slashing costs and fast-tracking the multi-billion-dollar expansion of U.S. uranium enrichment capacity.

The collaboration, showcased at Thursday's AIPCon 9 event, deploys Palantir's Foundry and Artificial Intelligence Platform across Centrus' operations. Early work since late January has already pinpointed nearly $300 million in potential cost savings and efficiencies. This would be on top of the $900 million they were recently awarded for their expansion efforts. 

Further gains are expected to compress manufacturing lead times and accelerate the rollout of new capacity at Centrus' Ohio plant, which is the only U.S.-owned commercial enrichment facility currently operating. The company is already starting to prepare additional centrifuges at their manufacturing facilities. 

Centrus President and CEO Amir Vexler remarked on the immediate cost savings and their ongoing EPC partnership with Fluor, while Palantir Industrials EVPs Joanna Peller and Tom McArdle noted how the partnership demonstrates how “AI-powered software can drive measurable impact in critical infrastructure projects”.

The announcement between the two companies came on the same day Energy Secretary Chris Wright was providing comments to CNN regarding enriched uranium imports from Russia. 

The U.S. will rely on “our partners in Europe” to enable the U.S. to fully cut off uranium imports from Russia by the current deadline of 2028. 

There's an obvious desire by the U.S. to cut their dependence on Russian imports, given the Russians currently supply about 20-25% of the feedstock required by the U.S. commercial nuclear fleet.

As Secretary Wright noted on Thursday morning, the quickest likely path are the ongoing expansion efforts at the already-operating enrichment facility in New Mexico owned by Urenco.