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French nuclear fuel specialist Orano is considering building a uranium enrichment facility in the United States, the group’s chairman said on Wednesday, as the US seeks to reduce its reliance on imports of the fuel from Russia.
State-owned Orano, previously known as Areva, had reached advanced plans to build such a facility in the state of Idaho in the late 2000s but was forced to abandon the project after the Fukushima nuclear disaster led some countries to shut down nuclear reactors or suspend projects, resulting in enrichment overcapacity.
The plan for a facility in the US, the world’s largest nuclear power producer, has now been resurrected, said Claude Imauven, chairman of Orano’s board.
“It’s a topic that was studied in the past by Areva and is now being studied by Orano,” he told an event organised by think tank Confrontations Europe.
He did not provide details on how advanced the plans were.
Orano said in October it will invest in increasing production capacity at its uranium enrichment facility in southern France, largely to meet demand from its US clients.
The expansion would help to reduce the risk of any halt in supplies from Russia’s Rosatom, which provides about 30% of the West’s enriched uranium, according to Orano.
US-based Centrus Energy started up a new plant in Ohio late last year to produce high-assay, low-enriched uranium (HALEU), a fuel required for next-generation reactors.
US President Joe Biden signed a bill this month approving $2.7 billion in US funding for domestic fuel production, including other HALEU projects.
Orano mines uranium in Canada, Kazakhstan and Niger and has a single fuel enrichment facility in France, which accounts for 12% of the global capacity.
Rosatom holds a 43% share, while European group Urenco accounts for 31%.
(By Benjamin Mallet and Dominique Patton; Editing by Estelle Shirbon)
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