West Kentucky Star

Nuclear Regulatory Commission accepts General Matter application

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced on Thursday that it has accepted the initial application for General Matter’s production facility in Paducah.

General Matter CEO Scott Nolan was in Paducah on Thursday along with Tim Walsh, the Assistant Secretary for the Office of Environmental Management at the U.S. Department of Energy. The two men stood with the 100-acre plot being prepared for the new uranium enrichment facility as a backdrop, as they discussed the remediation and reindustrialization of the site. Nolan said at the midday event that the notice of acceptance would likely be delivered later in the day.

The acceptance letter read in part, “The quality and completeness of the application reflect the effectiveness of General Matter’s constructive pre-application engagement with the NRC staff. These efforts supported an efficient acceptance review and enabled the NRC staff to accept the application in approximately half the timeframe typically allotted for an acceptance review.”

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission stated that the normal timeframe for a technical review is 18 months, but with the type of open communication the commission and the company have had, it could potentially move quicker. Nolan indicated that construction of the building on the former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant site would begin in 2027. He said 2026 was a year for site preparation, 2027 would be a year of construction, 2028 would be the year they outfit the facility with the tools and equipment they will need, before the plant goes into operation in 2029. His timeframe is contingent upon the NRC completing their licensing work.

Walsh was in town to promote and talk about the development of the American Energy Hub program in Paducah. The American Energy Hub, on the site of the country’s last uranium enrichment facility, includes not only General Matter, but also the Brookfield/NextEra data center and power generation complex. Those two projects, plus the Global Laser Enrichment project adjacent to the site, represent over $100 billion in investment in Paducah.

Walsh said, “Where there is energy, there is prosperity. And under President Trump’s administration, we are all in about driving the cost of electricity down for American consumers.”

He touted the nuclear renaissance, driven by the new digital infrastructure. Walsh said nuclear is clean, safe, and necessary to power facilities like the data center project announced earlier this year. Walsh recognized the history of the plant, as well as the community that has supported it over the decades.

Nolan said they would like to, ultimately, scale up their operations to the point that nuclear energy is the least expensive form of baseload power. He reiterated that the former plant was a part of why they selected Paducah, but the community, as a whole, along with the workforce, made Paducah the perfect choice. Walsh also noted that leftover material stored on the site will be the basis for the nuclear fuel project, thus helping to speed the cleanup.

During the question-and-answer portion of the event, Nolan was asked about the type of technology they would employ. He said that they would reveal it during the first half of 2027. He referred to it as an engineering contest, not a science project.

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