Uranium enrichers mark expansion milestones

Friday, 11 October 2024

Urenco announced plans in July 2023 to increase capacity at its Eunice plant - the only operating commercial uranium enrichment facility in North America - by 15%. New commitments from US customers for non-Russian fuel underpin this investment, the company noted.

It said the project would see multiple new centrifuge cascades added to the existing Urenco USA (UUSA) plant. The expansion of the plant - operated by Louisiana Energy Services LLC (LES) - will provide an additional capacity of around 700 tonnes of separative work units (SWU) per year, with the first new cascades due online in 2025. The plant currently has a production capacity of 4600 tSWU per year.

Urenco has now installed the first new centrifuges in an existing centrifuge hall at the site. It said federal, state and local officials, Urenco leadership, representatives of the more than 500 UUSA employees and contractors, and members of the community gathered at the facility on 9 October to mark the occasion.

Urenco said it is on schedule to begin producing enriched uranium from newly installed centrifuges in 2025. 

"Our enrichment site in Eunice is ideally located to serve our US customers and the wider global market to help meet energy security and decarbonisation goals," said Urenco CEO Boris Schucht. "This facility has successfully operated for more than a decade and the expansion is further proof of the domestic supply it consistently delivers.

"This is only the latest step. We are intending to further expand our capacity in the US, subject to market needs, as the strong momentum in the nuclear industry continues. This will not only mean an even stronger US nuclear fuel supply chain, but more jobs, skills, and development so we can continue to attract and retain the next generation of operators, engineers and scientists for the future of this industry."

The Eunice site's expansion project, scheduled for completion in 2027, is the first to be delivered under Urenco's capacity expansion programme, and will strengthen the nuclear fuel supply chain both in the USA and globally.

Urenco also operates three enrichment facilities in Europe: at Capenhurst in the UK, Almelo in the Netherlands and Gronau in Germany.

In total, under Urenco's current expansion, 1.8 million SWU will be delivered across three projects, including two others at Urenco's sites in Germany and the Netherlands.

Expansion of French plant
 

Orano held a ceremony on 10 October to mark the laying of the foundation stone of the Georges Besse 2 (GB-II) plant extension at the Tricastin site in France.

_{(Image: Cyril Crespeau / Orano)}

The GB-II centrifuge enrichment plant - which superseded the Georges Besse I gaseous diffusion enrichment plant that ended production in June 2012 - was officially opened in December 2010 and reached its full production capacity of 7.5 million SWU in 2016.

In October 2023, the board of directors of Orano approved an investment of some EUR1.7 billion (USD1.9 billion) to raise the production capacity of the plant by more than 30%.

The project consists of building a further four modules identical to the fourteen existing modules that use "the same recognised, tried-and-tested technology and with a reduced environmental footprint", the company said. The additional cascades will increase the plant's capacity by 2.5 million SWU.

The new modules are expected to begin operating in 2028, with complete commissioning of the extension in 2030.

Nicolas Maes said: "The project which is taking shape here today is one of the five most important industrial projects underway in France today. It is an important step in Orano's development.

"Thanks to this expansion of our capacity, we will strengthen the supply chain of our utility customers and in particular, for many of them, make them less sensitive to geopolitical risks. The production of the plant will enable nearly 120 million homes to be supplied with low-carbon electricity and contribute to fighting global warming."

In early September, Orano USA announced it had selected Oak Ridge as its preferred site for a new centrifuge uranium enrichment facility.

Orano's forerunner company Areva had previously planned to build the Eagle Rock centrifuge plant at Idaho Falls. That plant was originally envisaged as a 3.3 million SWU per year plant with the company later applying to the US regulators to double its capacity to 6.6 million SWU. It was subsequently cancelled, and Orano requested the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to terminate its licence for the plant in 2018.