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Friday, November 21, 2008

LES Wants To Double Size of Uranium Plant Near Eunice


Associated Press
      EUNICE — Louisiana Energy Services is proposing to double the size of a southeastern New Mexico plant being built to make fuel for commercial nuclear power plants.
    "One of the major drivers for us is demand," Reinhard Hinterreither, the company's chief executive officer and president, said Thursday. "The reason we are building a bigger plant is because we have customer demand. Our customers have approached us over the past year and asked to purchase additional power from us."
    An expanded factory would produce 50 percent of the nation's enriched uranium needs by 2015 instead of the 25 percent under the original plan.
    The latest plan will increase construction costs for the National Enrichment Center near Eunice from $1.5 billion to $3 billion and will extend construction by at least two years, to 2014.
    Hinterreither said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission must approve the expansion. LES would be looking at amending its current NRC license, a process he said would not be as extensive as obtaining the original license.
    "There are still a number of steps the NRC has to approve," he said.
    State Environment Secretary Ron Curry said the LES proposal will require amending the facility's groundwater discharge permit issued by his department as well.
    "We understand that LES will proceed with amending its state permit first and look forward to carefully reviewing this application," he said in a statement released Friday. He said that review would include public hearings if requested.
    Increased capacity also would result in more uranium byproducts. The company currently is authorized to store only a limited amount of the waste onsite for a specified time. Hinterreither said that limit would not be reached until 2016 or 2017, giving LES time to explore alternatives for selling, recycling or disposal.
    Currently, the United States has no place to dispose of waste from the enrichment plant, although a French company, Areva Inc., has agreed to build a private deconversion facility to handle it.
    Don Hancock of the Southwest Research and Information Center, an Albuquerque-based nuclear watchdog group, questioned whether an increased market for electricity exists, and noted LES has no place to send the waste.
    "They have to get a new groundwater permit from the state, a license from the NRC, additional financing," he said. "It's more than strange they're thinking of expanding a plant that hasn't even been built yet and isn't operating yet."
    The increased factory size also will mean an additional 50 to 60 full-time jobs on top of the 300 full-time jobs expected under the original plan, officials said.
    Phase 1 is expected to be finished in 2009, and the factory should be producing 25 percent of its eventual capacity then. Phase 2 is expected to start while Phase 1 is being finished, Hinterreither said. The factory would ramp up capacity 25 percent at a time.
    Nearly all the fuel made by the National Enrichment Center would be sold to U.S. companies, Hinterreither said.
    Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., a long-time supporter of nuclear power, praised the LES announcement.
    "Doubling the capacity of the NEF will truly solidify New Mexico's leading role in the rebirth and growth of American-generated nuclear power," Domenici, ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in a news release from his Washington office. "The expansion of the LES plant will mean that this single plant in Lea County will be able to supply much more of the fuel for the nuclear plants in the United States for decades to come."
    It would be the first factory in the United States to use a high-speed centrifuge system to enrich uranium for power plants rather than a process known as gaseous diffusion that has been around since World War II.
    LES is made up of European-based Urenco, British Nuclear Fuels Unlimited and minor U.S. partners.

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