Public comments open on Orano's Tennessee uranium plant

A proposed uranium enrichment plant in Roane County, Tennessee, has reached the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s environmental review stage. The NRC is starting scoping for an environmental impact statement on Orano Enrichment USA LLC’s plan to build and operate a uranium enrichment facility, and it is asking the public to help define what that review should cover by July 13, 2026.

That matters because the environmental impact statement is where the agency has to lay out the project’s possible effects before any license decision. For nearby communities, this is the first federal filter on a plant that would enrich uranium for nuclear fuel.

The first federal filter

The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management will serve as a cooperating agency in the review. The application says the facility would use gas centrifuge technology to enrich uranium hexafluoride up to 10 weight percent uranium-235, and the license could run for up to 40 years.

Those details do not turn this notice into a decision on the plant itself. They show why the scoping process matters: the NRC is deciding now which questions deserve a closer look before it writes the environmental impact statement.

The July 13 deadline

Comments on the scope are due July 13, 2026. Late submissions will be considered only if practical, so the deadline is the real chance for residents, environmental groups and others to get concerns into the record while the agency is still choosing its frame.

For a project this sensitive, the fight is often over the checklist before it is over the license. The questions set now can shape how the plant is judged later.