Right: The existing Tails Management Facility at Capenhurst is being expanded
Not only does Urenco envisage increasing customer
demand as more countries and utility companies turn to nuclear energy but also opportunities as existing nuclear interests seek to diversify their sources of nuclear fuel. Stephens outlines just how dramatic the changes in the nuclear sector have been: “We were an organisation that until around February of last year was looking at perhaps being a smaller organization by 2030 in relation to the fact that nuclear power wasn’t seen as a sustainable path forward and from 2011, the Fukushima incident made the enrichment market a little bit less. There was a bit of an oversupply in the market and there were less new builds and there was less call for SWU services. However, since the conflict in Ukraine and the climate crisis has really come to the fore and with energy security concerns around the world, more and more countries and energy companies are turning to nuclear and seeking a diversity of their supply of nuclear fuel. That’s where we come in.”
Increasing enrichment in light of a potential uptick in demand, chimes in with the company’s capacity programme, which includes refurbishment of existing capacity as well as expansion and build out. Urenco’s first capacity expansion is to be at its US site in New Mexico. The project, announced in July this year, will see multiple new centrifuge cascades added to the plant. According to the company, new commitments from US customers for non-Russian fuel underpin this investment, which will provide an additional capacity of around 700 tonnes of SWU per year, a 15% increase. The first new cascades are scheduled to come online in 2025 and the expansion will be fully online by 2027. Stephens explains: “Urenco is very much committed to
strengthening energy security around the world and that’s been in question over the last two years. We’ll do this with our capacity programme which is about refurbishment of our existing facilities and centrifuges, but also expanding
Above: Urenco’s Capenhurst site in the UK will be home to the expanded TMF facility Source: Urenco 14 | November 2023 |
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