GE-Hitachi announced a plan to build an enrichment facility in the Wilmington, NC. The plant is expected to provide 3.5 to 6 million SWU/year using the Silex laser isotope separation technology, which GEH licensed from an Australian company Silex Systems Ltd. in 2006. Construction of the plant is not expected to begin until at least 2012.
April 2008 Archives
The ADE-4 plutonium production reactor at the Seberian Chemical Combine (SKhK) in Seversk/Tomsk-7 was shut down at 11:00am on April 20, 2008 (here is a detailed description of the shutdown). The second Seversk reactor, ADE-5, will be shut down on June 5th, 2008.
One of the main points of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), announced by the United States in 2004, was to limit spread of enrichment (as well as reprocessing) technology. At the core of the strategy was the idea that countries that don't have fuel cycle facilities would refrain from acquiring them and accept the status of "fuel customers". Fuel services would then be provided by "fuel suppliers", who already have the necessary technology.
There were doubts about the viability of this strategy from the very beginning - it was unclear why uranium suppliers like Australia or Canada would want to forgo the option of moving up the chain and getting into uranium enrichment business, rather than being just suppliers of raw material. Eventually, this is exactly how the GNEP strategy fell apart - Canada, a member of GNEP, apparently secured an arrangement that would allow it to build a uranium enrichment facility.
Russian press quotes a Japanese official as saying that Japan would be interested in the services of the Angarsk International Uranium Enrichment Center but needs more information about the arrangement. The statement was made in the context of continuing negotiations between Russia and Japan on a nuclear cooperation agreement that began about a year ago.