The Economics of Domestic HALEU Supply Chain Development: A Cost-Benefit and Supply Chain Modeling Analysis for U.S. Small Modular Reactor Fuel Security

The United States faces a critical vulnerability in its nuclear energy future: the absence of a domestic commercial supply chain for High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU), the enabling fuel for most advanced small modular reactor (SMR) designs. Following decades of dependence on Russian enrichment services and the passage of the Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act of 2024, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) committed $2.7 billion through the HALEU Availability Program to catalyze domestic production capacity. This dissertation presents the first comprehensive, multi-method economic assessment of this investment. Four complementary quantitative methods were employed: cost-benefit analysis (CBA) evaluated the program's net social value over a 30-year horizon (2025–2055); mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) optimization identified the cost-minimizing supply chain configuration; Monte Carlo simulation (10,000 iterations) quantified the probability distribution of economic outcomes under stochastic uncertainty; and vector autoregression (VAR) with difference-in-differences (DID) econometrics assessed uranium market dynamics and the structural impact of the 2024 import ban. Results demonstrate that the HALEU program is strongly economically justified: CBA yields a net present value of $29.6 billion with a benefit-cost ratio of 8.49 at a 3% discount rate and an internal rate of return of 24.4%. MILP analysis identifies $2.72 billion as the critical budget feasibility threshold, below which projected demand cannot be met. Monte Carlo simulation confirms program robustness, finding only a 1.5% probability of negative net present value, with transportation cask availability emerging as the single most influential risk parameter (r = 0.77). Econometric analysis reveals a statistically significant structural break in enrichment markets coinciding with the Russian import ban (Chow F = 15.59, p < .001). All results were validated through 61 systematic sanity checks (56 pass, 5 flag, 0 fail). This research contributes the first integrated economic framework for HALEU supply chain assessment, the first econometric evidence of the import ban's market impact, and a novel identification of transport infrastructure as the critical bottleneck requiring immediate policy attention.