French nuclear group Areva is mulling the construction of a uranium enrichment plant in the United States to meet growing energy needs there, a company spokesman said Tuesday.
"We have a uranium enrichment plant project in the United States," the spokesman said, confirming a report in the financial daily Les Echos, while adding that the plan was in a "preliminary phase of study and consultations."
"No decision has been made to invest, it is just the start of a project," he stressed. "We have submitted it to the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission), the State Department, the Department of Energy, to members of Congress and to clients. All have expressed interest."
It would be Areva's first uranium enrichment facility in the United States, where the world's biggest nuclear company already provides services to the nuclear industry. The plant could be operational by 2014 and help meet needs for new uranium enrichment capacity in this market," the spokesman said. In a recent research note, analysts at the CM-CIC brokerage estimated that the United States imported more than 90 percent of its enriched uranium.
Areva, along with three US and two Japanese partners, is already bidding on a US Department of Energy contract to build a large nuclear treatment and recycling unit in the country.
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