| News And Information
September 5, 2003
Disarmament agreements: the US Department of Energy (DOE) chooses AREVA for the manufacture of demonstration MOX fuel
Within the scope of international disarmament agreements, in 2002, the US government chose AREVA technology to dispose of all its excess military plutonium stocks in the form of MOX fuel. For this purpose, it decided to build a MOX manufacturing plant in South Carolina with which AREVA is associated through the Duke-COGEMA-Stone&Webster (DCS) consortium.
To enable the Duke Power utility to qualify this new fuel in a reactor, the DOE has chosen AREVA to manufacture four demonstration MOX fuel assemblies.
The French nuclear industry has received agreement from government authorities to assist the DOE. The file for fabrication at COGEMA Cadarache has been submitted to the French Safety Authorities.
A test production will be made during four months in 2004.
The manufacturing operations will only use a small quantity of plutonium, less than one twentieth of the amount recycled each year in the plant when industrial production was carried out there. This trial run will not change the decision to cease activities at the COGEMA Cadarache site, a process which began July 31, 2003. The site is currently mainly involved in conditioning scrap material as a result of the shutdown of commercial MOX fuel manufacturing operations.
AREVA is proud to contribute once again to international agreements on disarmament.
AREVA employs over 7,000 people in the United States and generated revenues of $1.7 billion in 2002.
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For further information, please contact directly:
In the U.S. AREVA Enterprises, Inc
Communications Team
Penny Phelps / Yves Gautier
Tel: 301 986 8585
or In France
AREVA Press Office :
Charles Hufnagel / Patrick Germain / Sophie Renaud
Tel: +33 1 44 83 71 17
E-mail : press@arevagroup.com
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