Should you second-source this before one supplier can halt a build?
A sole-source or foreign-controlled item — a large forging, HALEU fuel, a permanent magnet in a coolant-pump or valve actuator, a safety-classified process — is one event away from stopping a build. The question is which one is worth the cost of a second source, and which can wait.
Settled as the Second-Source Evidence PackSome single points are cheap insurance to second-source; most aren’t worth the spend. The trouble is telling them apart without a traced, evidenced read of where you’re actually single-threaded — and what each dependency would really cost you to lose, in schedule and in the safety case.
Where you’re single-threaded — and what it would cost.
Typical reader: a procurement or operations director.
The forgings and the fuel under your build are concentrated — and one control is only paused.
Ultra-large reactor-pressure-vessel forgings are made by a global handful of forgemasters on multi-year lead times, and one state-owned domestic forgemaster carries the UK’s high-integrity work. Advanced fuel is narrower still: until the Urenco Capenhurst HALEU plant produces around 2031, one state supplier has been the only commercial source, in a market where Russia holds ~40% of world enrichment capacity (IEA, January 2025). And on 7 November 2025 China suspended — but did not repeal — its rare-earth and permanent-magnet export controls, the licence regime reaching any item whose Chinese-origin rare earths are 0.1% of its value, paused only to 10 November 2026. There is a further concentration to weigh: the SMR prime shares a listed parent — and a single manufacturing base — with a large, long-committed defence reactor workload that holds first call on that capacity; that prior claim on the line is your own exposure to hold. Each points to second-sourcing before a build — or a policy reversal — bites. See what changed →