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Fact Sheet

Getting Ready to Scale: Addressing U.S. Nuclear Energy Supply Chain Constraints

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The commercial U.S. nuclear energy sector is experiencing renewed interest, driven by rising electricity demand, energy security concerns, and decarbonization goals. Turning this momentum into deployed capacity depends on domestic supply chain readiness. Manufacturing components, qualifying suppliers, and building skilled workforce pipelines are long-lead efforts that take years to mature. Without early coordination, bottlenecks could delay projects and undermine national security and global leadership. 

The Nuclear Scaling Initiative (NSI) and Solestiss have identified a self-reinforcing cycle of paralysis that exists across reactor types and sizes: suppliers hesitate to invest without firm demand signals, while utilities and industrial buyers hesitate to commit without supply certainty. This dynamic constrains fuel availability, manufacturing, and workforce growth. 

This fact sheet outlines the supply chain and workforce dynamics that constrain new nuclear energy deployment and recommends a plan of coordinated actions that stakeholders can take to unlock investment and establish durable demand signals. 

Key Findings

Several interrelated constraints limit the scalability of advanced nuclear deployment in the United States: 

Fuel supply for all technologies reflects differentiated, though interconnected, constraints. The low-enriched uranium supply chain is mature but has limited excess capacity, and rapid deployment could create bottlenecks. For high-assay low-enriched uranium, the United States lacks domestic commercial-scale enrichment, deconversion, transport, and fabrication capability. Plutonium-bearing fuel would require the buildout of dedicated reprocessing and fabrication facilities, raising security, proliferation, and waste remediation risks.  

Manufacturing bottlenecks are concentrated downstream. While large forging capacity remains limited to select suppliers, the most acute constraints arise in machining, welding, finishing, inspection, and non-destructive examination. These labor-intensive, qualification-bound processes limit throughput in rapid, new deployment scenarios. Fragmented supplier networks, slow qualification pathways, and design variability increase schedule risk and dilute learning across projects. 

Labor shortages extend beyond construction trades. In addition to shortages among skilled tradespeople essential for large construction, shortfalls in nuclear-qualified machinists, welders, inspectors, non-destructive evaluation specialists, and experienced project and construction managers pose execution risks. These roles require years to develop and compete with other high-demand industries, limiting deployment scale. 

Critical material variability and dependencies pose strategic risk. Reliance on non-standardized and concentrated, non-allied foreign sources for key advanced reactor materials such as nuclear-grade graphite and enriched lithium-7 increases exposure to disruption. 

Regulatory and qualification barriers limit scale. Strict quality standards, including NQA-1, narrow the supplier base and slow expansion. Without more efficient, repeatable approval pathways, growing the domestic industrial base will remain difficult. 

Recommendations for Stakeholders

Scaling advanced nuclear energy will require coordinated action across federal government, industry, and workforce institutions.

Federal Government 

  • Provide durable, long-term policy signals to stabilize demand 
  • Deploy funding quickly and predictably 
  • Implement risk-sharing mechanisms for first-of-a-kind projects within a fleet 

Regulators and Standards Organizations 

  • Ensure predictable, efficient, standardized approval pathways for supply chain developers 
  • Create repeatable, predictable qualification processes and alternative quality assurance routes to responsibly expand the supplier base 

Industry (engineering, procurement, and construction firms; original equipment manufacturers; and suppliers) 

  • Prioritize throughput-critical processes such as machining, welding, and inspection 
  • Standardize designs, embed manufacturability early, and use prime-led qualification programs to integrate new suppliers more efficiently 

Utilities, Offtakers, and Capital Providers 

  • Offer firm, long-duration contracts and fleet-style procurement to create durable demand signals 
  • Align contracting strategies with realistic supply chain and workforce timelines 

Workforce and Training Institutions 

  • Expand training pipelines in step with project deployment 
  • Anticipate skill needs to ensure qualified trades, engineers, project managers, and QA personnel are available when projects move forward 

Learn more about U.S. supply chain constraints

NSI and Solestiss' report, "Landscape of U.S. Domestic Advanced Nuclear Energy Supply Chain," examines key segments of the domestic supply chain across fuel supply; systems, structures, and components; and the skilled workforce required to build and operate plants.

Read the Report

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