Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2665 actions· ✨ 90 recent

Peru's Congress enacted Ley N° 32560 on 22 March 2026, establishing the country's first legal framework for nuclear electricity generation and the deployment of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). The law tasks MINEM, MINAM, and the Peruvian Institute of Nuclear Energy (IPEN) with jointly assessing SMR viability across Peruvian departments, explicitly aiming to use domestic uranium resources as feedstock. Private investment in nuclear power is permitted under a free-competition regime, with mandatory National Environmental Impact Assessment (SEIA) review and citizen participation required at all project phases.

The US Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy, via its Idaho Operations Office, issued Funding Opportunity Announcement DE-FOA-0003538 on 15 December 2025, making USD 57 million available for the Fiscal Year 2026 Consolidated Innovative Nuclear Research (CINR) program. Individual awards range from a USD 3.1 million floor up to several million dollars, open to US universities, national laboratories, and US industry, with a companion FY2026 Phase II Continuation NOFO for previously-funded university teams. Research areas span continued operation of the existing US reactor fleet, deployment of advanced reactors, next-generation nuclear fuel cycles, and maintaining US nuclear-technology leadership.

On December 9, 2025 in Niamey, Niger's state uranium company TNUC and Uranium One Group JSC (a Rosatom State Corporation subsidiary) signed a Memorandum of Cooperation to jointly obtain permits for new uranium deposits, conduct geological exploration of prospective sites, and establish new uranium mining operations in Niger. The agreement completes Niger's post-coup pivot from French-controlled uranium channels (Orano/SOMAÏR expelled 2024–2025) to Russian-aligned supply, routing future NE yellowcake production through the Rosatom global enrichment network. A companion Rosatom–Niger MoU on peaceful nuclear energy cooperation (NPP feasibility and reactor construction) was signed in the same period.

Mongolia's State Great Hural adopted a comprehensive package of amendments to the 2009 Nuclear Energy Law on 21 November 2024 (approved by 68.1% of votes), restructuring the country's uranium-sector governance across three principal axes. The amendments introduce a dynamic three-tier uranium royalty framework — 5% basic (AMNAT) + 5% special + 0–9% price-linked incremental royalty, yielding approximately 14–19% aggregate — that replaces a flat-rate structure with a price-elastic mechanism designed to capture uranium supercycle upside for the Mongolian state. The law also prohibits export of radioactive minerals in raw ore form (mandatory domestic processing to at least yellowcake/U₃O₈ before export), prohibits import, transit, and disposal of foreign spent nuclear fuel in Mongolia, and provides the parliamentary legal underpinning for the ~USD 1.6 billion Orano (France)– Mongolia state investment agreement on the Zuuvch-Ovoo in-situ-leach uranium deposit (Dornogovi province), signed October 2024, targeting first production in 2028 with eventual ramp-up to ~2,500 t/yr uranium output.

Effective August 11, 2023, BIS amended 15 CFR Parts 738 and 742 to add the People's Republic of China and Macau to Nuclear Nonproliferation (NP2) licensing requirements under the Export Administration Regulations. The rule inserts NP2 "X" column markings for China and Macau in the Commerce Country Chart, subjecting exports of eight ECCN families (1A290, 1C298, 2A290, 2A291, 2D290, 2E001, 2E002, 2E290) to a BIS licence requirement. The measure was motivated by China's military modernisation, military-civil fusion strategy, and nuclear force expansion; prior to this rule, neither China nor Macau was subject to NP2 controls in the EAR.

The US Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) added 71 entities — 70 Russian and 1 Belarusian — to the Entity List, effective June 2, 2022, in direct response to Russia's further invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The entities were designated as military end users acquiring or attempting to acquire US-origin items in support of Russia's military, and are subject to a policy of denial for all items subject to the Export Administration Regulations (EAR). Sixty-six entities receive a "footnote 3" military end-user designation, while five face outright denial with no license exceptions available beyond humanitarian food and medicine.