The U.S. Has Zero Domestic Commercial HALEU Production Capacity, Leaving Advanced Reactor Fuel Supply 100% Dependent on Russia's Tenex

High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU), enriched to between 5% and 20% U-235, is required by nearly every advanced reactor design under development in the U.S., yet Russia's Tenex is the only commercial supplier on Earth, and the Centrus Energy demonstration cascade in Piketon, Ohio has produced only 920 kg of HALEU through mid-2025 — a fraction of what a single commercial reactor would need annually. Why it matters: advanced reactor developers cannot secure firm fuel supply commitments, so projects like TerraPower's Natrium in Kemmerer, Wyoming have already been delayed by fuel availability issues, so utility and data center customers cannot sign bankable power purchase agreements without fuel certainty, so private investment in advanced nuclear stalls because the technology risk is compounded by unresolved fuel supply risk, so the entire U.S. advanced reactor commercialization timeline slips by 3-5 years while Russia and China deploy their own designs fueled by domestic enrichment. The structural root cause is that the U.S. dismantled its gaseous diffusion enrichment infrastructure (Paducah closed in 2013, Portsmouth in 2001) without building centrifuge replacement capacity for higher enrichment levels, and the January 2026 DOE commitment of $2.7 billion over ten years to expand domestic enrichment will take years to translate into operational facilities.