Uranium Enrichment(updated October 2010)Most of the 495...

Uranium Enrichment(updated October 2010)


Most of the 495 commercial nuclear power reactors operating or under construction in the world today require uranium 'enriched' in the U-235 isotope for their fuel.
The main commercial process employed for this enrichment involves gaseous uranium in centrifuges. An Australian process based on laser excitation is under development in the USA.
Prior to enrichment, uranium oxide must be converted to a fluoride so that it can be processed as a gas, at low temperature.
From a non-proliferation standpoint, uranium enrichment is a sensitive technology needing to be subject to tight international control
International Enrichment Centres, Multilateral approaches

Following proposals from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Russia, and in connection with the US-led Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), there are moves to establish international uranium enrichment centres. These are one kind of multilateral nuclear approaches (MNA) called for by IAEA. Part of the motivation for international centres is to bring all new enrichment capacity, and perhaps eventually all enrichment, under international control as a non-proliferation measure. Precisely what "control" means remains to be defined, and will not be uniform in all situations. But having ownership and operation shared among a number of countries at least means that there is a level of international scrutiny which is unlikely in a strictly government-owned and -operated national facility
The USA has expressed support for the IUEC at Angarsk. IUEC will sell both enrichment services (SWU) and enriched uranium product
A new Areva plant in the USA has no ownership diversity beyond that of Areva itself, so will be essentially a French plant on US territory. The only other major enrichment plant in the Western world is USEC's very old one, in the USA.

The Global Laser Enrichment project which may proceed to build a commercial plant in the USA has shareholding from companies based in three countries: USA (51%), Canada (24%) and Japan (25%).

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf28.html