Posted on 05/07/2008 8:22:06 AM PDT by kellynla
AREVA, a French-based company, has chosen Bonneville County, Idaho, as the site for its first U.S. uranium enrichment facility.
"While we had several attractive sites to choose from, we opted for Idaho Falls, which has strong ties to nuclear energy, and which welcomed AREVA and its proposed enrichment facility to become a new member of its community," said Michael McMurphy, President of Areva Inc. "We look forward to a productive and long-term partnership that will deliver diversity and strength to the regional economy."
The $2 billion plant will be built 18 miles west of Idaho Falls, close to the Idaho National Laboratory, and will employ more than 1,000 workers to construct the building, which will take several years to finish. Once the plant is done, more than 250 people will be employed full-time to process natural uranium to use in domestic commercial nuclear power plants.
The proposed timeline is:
A design for the plant and acquiring the needed state and federal approvals will take about two to three years. By 2011, the construction phase of the plant will begin. AREVA plans to have the plant operational by 2014. The Regional Development Alliance estimated the overall economic impact to the region would be approximately $5.1 billion.
Good stuff.
Since it’s French owned maybe we could pay them to reprocess our spent fuel rods instead of following Carters dictate and letting them waste away in swimming pools.
Maybe they could open some French saw mills so the loggers in Idaho can get back to work.
It is about time we started reprocessing here instead of sending it to France.
Still, it burns me that we had a fast breeder reactor on the drawing board in 1994 when the Clintonistas ash-canned it due to “proliferation fears.”
Since the FBR project was scrapped, India, Pakistan and possibly North Korea are confirmed nuclear powers, Libya was aborted, and Iran is on the fast track. Oh, and we’re back to talking about burying tons of high-level waste that could be reprocessed into usable fuel in Yucca Mountain. Talk about an unproductive use of a limited resource.
Shows that the typical idiotic babbling from leftists on nuclear power is useless. I wish the GOP would grow a set and humiliate the clowns who come up on Capitol Hill to protest against nuclear power.
But the sailors going through training out there in the desert love those pools for a nice cool dip.
Clinton (probably Hillary more than Bill) killed the IFR just prior to their demonstrating it's feasibility using the EBR-II in Idaho as a test bed. It would be helpful to the industry if it succeeded, you see, and they couldn't have that. Instead, they took the funds from IFR and allocated them to decommissioning the IFR. Smart anti-nuke move, that. Not only kill the program, but destroy the test facility so if someone later wants to revive the idea, they won't have a place to test it.
But she claims she's “for” the environment ....
I grew up in Idaho falls and Pocatello, and the nuke industry west of IF has provided good jobs for thousands over the years.
Don't know if it's still there, but the Navy used to have their nuclear power production school there. My cousin met/married a sailor attending the school.
This is not reprocessing spent fuel. It's taking natural uranium and producing a product with more U-235 in it. Natural uranium is about 0.72% U-235. A reactor that could use that would be huge. If you increase the amount of fissionable U-235 to about (IIRC) 2% or so, the reactor core for a nuclear power plant can be smaller. The enrichment for ship reactors is much higher than that, so the core is as small as possible.
I had read somewhere that we were buying weapons grade fissile material from Russia, Ukraine, some of the *stan countries and sending it to France for processing into power reactor fuel.
Was this an incorrect report?
Anybady can make a claim.
Been doing it for over 15 years now as part of the Nunn-Lugar Act. The Soviets had literally tones of weapons grade stuff and the decision was made back when the USSR disolved that it would be wise to get it out of those places before it got sold to the 'wrong' people.
AREVA is only one partner, Denison Mines Ltd out of Canada is the other major partner.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=DML.TO
Good times for Idaho and Idahoans, energy independence is around the corner.
Two other training plants were also up there: A1W (prototype for the aircraft carrier (Enterprise-sized) reactors, and S1G (I think that was the number over there). It was the prototype for a silent running natural convention submarine reactor. It worked OK, but was only used once in the fleet.
Now, training is in Charleston in an old submarine permanently mounted for training in the harbor. Not sure if its better than being out in the desert, but the very old reactors really are not right after that many years for the risks of training cycles.
Nope - S5G was Narwhal’s prototype out at INEL. S1G was the earlier Seawolf reactor.
“energy independence is around the corner?”
Do you know something we don’t or are you just being optimistic. LOL
The guy had a great career, and retired as an E-9 at 20 years. Believe he made E-7 around 8 years and MCPO at 13!
Well I was talking about reprocessing spent fuel, not new fuel.
And I also trained at S1W back in the early 70s. Did you guys ever go to “Skate City” up near the top of the building?
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