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Challenges and Outlook for the Front End Business Group

Fuel inspection

In the context of the nuclear power revival, AREVA not only plans to grow its business in the Front End of the cycle, but also to expand its market share through integrated services, which constitute a powerful competitive advantage. The strategic objective of the Business Group is to secure the supply of fuel and of associated materials for its clients. To do so, the group will continue to develop and renew its industrial installations and its fuel offering.

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"Georges Besse II" brochure

The Georges Besse II facility will take enrichment activity at AREVA into a new era. Presentation of the planned process of centrifugation enrichment, the design of the facility and its impact on the environment.

Renewing and expanding production resources for conversion and enrichment services

The conversion and enrichment markets are structured around a limited number of international players in the United States, Europe and Russia. The nuclear revival sweeping the world will translate into strong market growth.

AREVA has prepared for this by replacing its facilities. The group will invest 6 billion euros to modernize its production facilities over the next five years via the following major projects: 

  • In 2007, AREVA launched the Comurhex II project to replace older conversion facilities with new plants at the Tricastin and Malvési sites in the south of France. Commercial production, with a baseline of 15,000 MT per year, is scheduled to come on line in 2012. Capacity is to be stepped up to 21,000 MT of uranium per year as market conditions justify.
  • In addition, the group's existing enrichment plant in France, Georges Besse I, will be replaced by a new facility named Georges Besse II, where production began in 2009.  The new plant uses commercially proven centrifuge enrichment technology, which significantly reduces the electricity component of enrichment production costs. In a gaseous diffusion enrichment plant such as Georges Besse I, electricity is the biggest component of production costs. It should be noted that the new plant will consume 50 times less electricity and will not draw any water from the Rhone River.
  • To serve the fast-growing US enrichment market, AREVA is also planning to expand in the United States, where it will build the Eagle Rock Enrichment Facility in Idaho. This plant, based on the same technology and same model as the Georges Besse II facility, will produced 3.2 million SWUs (Separative Work Units) annually starting in 2018. Feedback from the Georges Besse II operation will allow AREVA to optimize costs, deadlines and the return on investment for the Eagle Rock project.

Combined with the group’s other major projects, the Comurhex II, Georges Besse II and Eagle Rock Enrichment Facility projects will enable AREVA to strengthen its position as a sustainable and integrated leader in the front end of the fuel cycle. With its rejuvenated offering, the Front End Business Group is able to support the sale of new reactors while remaining a preferred provider to existing reactors.

Continually adapting our range of fuel assemblies to meet market demand

The fuel fabrication market has strong entry barriers consisting of a wide range of technical specifications which only reactor designers can fully grasp. It is nonetheless still a highly competitive market, given the excess production capacity worldwide. Market growth is also a function of installed generating capacity and plant load factors, minus the effect of heightened fuel performance.

At the end of 2009, 131 of the world’s 306 operating PWR and BWR reactors (excluding Russian-designed VVER reactors) routinely used AREVA fuel. With more than one third of the market, the group has a leading position that it fully intends to maintain. Every unit of the group is mobilized:

  • to ensure the quality and performance of our products by:
    • improving their performance characteristics,
    • reducing reactor operating costs.
  • to renew the range of AREVA products with advanced assembly designs capitalizing on the latest technology.

More than ever, AREVA intends to provide its customers the added value of its unique positioning in every step of the fuel cycle by making full use of internal synergies to make innovative integrated offers.

Strategic programs are being carried out to prepare for the future. AREVA is optimizing its industrial performance at all of its fuel sites, including those dedicated to zirconium production. AREVA’s largest fuel fabrication site, in Romans, France, is being upgraded as part of the group’s major capital investments.

Limiting the ecological impact of its activities

Our new, more efficient processes use less energy, water and reagents while releasing fewer effluents.

At Malvési, for example, the new thermal denitration unit will eliminate the use of ammonia from this phase of the process and recycle citric acid. The quantity of water used in our conversion facilities will be divided by 10.

In enrichment, the new Georges Besse II plant (GB II) will use 50 times less electricity than the older facility it replaces and will not take any water from the Rhône River for cooling. Moreover, GB II is half as high as the existing plant and will produce no noise pollution. It will blend in with the landscape and the environment.

Similarly, the Richland site in the United States had reduced its hydrogen consumption considerably by modernizing the hydrogen feed technology used during uranium conversion and in the ceramic furnaces. Production safety and efficiency will thus be bolstered, earning AREVA bonuses for energy efficiency.