PARIS (Reuters) – French nuclear fuel specialist Orano could start enriching uranium at a new plant in the United States in the early 2030s, an executive said on Friday, boosting the company’s share of the global market as the U.S. phases out of Russian supplies.
The state-owned company said Wednesday it would build a new factory in Tennessee, months after President Joe Biden’s administration signed legislation to end America’s dependence on Russia’s Rosatom.
Orano is one of the few companies with fuel enrichment capabilities and demand is growing as new markets look to nuclear power for cleaner energy.
Orano is already planning a €1.7 billion expansion of its enrichment plant in southern France, increasing capacity by more than 30%, or 2.5 million Separative Work Units (SWU), partly to meet demand from US customers to comply.
A SWU is a measure of the uranium enrichment process, proportional to the input and mass produced.
By building a plant on U.S. soil, the company could tap up to $2.7 billion in U.S. financing for domestic uranium projects, said Francois Lurin, head of the company’s chemical enrichment business.
The company is targeting several million SWUs at the Oak Ridge, Tenn., plant, Lurin said, but will adapt to customer needs and required enrichment rates.
The plant could also be equipped to produce HALEU-type fuels enriched to higher levels than current commercial nuclear fuel for the next generation of large and small nuclear reactors, he added.
Investment decisions for Oak Ridge should begin next year, Lurin added, once the company gets long-term commitments from customers.
Orano must also obtain a license from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), along with federal support.
“If everything goes according to plan, if we start work, if we get financial support from the US government and firm orders from customers and if exchanges with the NRC go well, we can imagine production in early 2030,” he said . .
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