Urenco Group

URENCO Group

Type	limited
Headquarters	Marlow, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom
Products	nuclear fuel
Services	uranium enrichment
Website	www.urenco.com

The URENCO Group is a nuclear fuel company operating several uranium enrichment plants in Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It supplies nuclear power stations in about 15 countries, and has a 25% share of the global market for enrichment services. Urenco uses Zippe-type centrifuge enrichment technology.^{[citation needed]}

Subsidiaries

URENCO Deutschland GmbH, URENCO UK Ltd and URENCO Nederland BV are 100% subsidiaries of URENCO Enrichment Company Ltd. They operate enrichment plants at Gronau, Westphalia, Germany, at Capenhurst, Cheshire, United Kingdom and at Almelo, Overijssel, the Netherlands.^{[citation needed]}

In the United States, where URENCO is represented by its marketing subsidiary URENCO, Inc., the URENCO USA facility became operational in spring 2010. This National Enrichment Facility is located 5 miles (8.0 km) east of Eunice, New Mexico, and operated by Louisiana Energy Services (LES), a subsidiary of URENCO.^{[citation needed]}

URENCO also owns a 50% interest in Enrichment Technology Company (ETC), a company jointly owned with Areva. ETC provides enrichment-plant design services and gas-centrifuge technology for enrichment plants through its subsidiaries in the UK (Capenhurst), Germany (Gronau and Jülich), the Netherlands (Almelo), France (Tricastin) and the U.S. (Eunice, New Mexico).^{[citation needed]}

Ownership

URENCO is owned in three equal parts by Ultra-Centrifuge Nederland NV (owned by the Government of the Netherlands), Uranit GmbH (owned equally by German energy companies E.ON and RWE) and Enrichment Holdings Ltd (owned by the Government of the United Kingdom and managed by the Shareholder Executive).

Decommissioning

URENCO Netherlands BV has dismantled enrichment plant SP3, after the decommissioning of SP1 and SP2 in the 1980s and 1990s. Information about decommissioning cost calculations for URENCO facilities is not accessible.

Controversies

Namibia

In May 1985, the United Nations Council for Namibia (UNCN) decided to take legal action against URENCO for breaching UNCN Decree No 1, which prohibited any exploitation of Namibia's natural resources under apartheid South Africa, because URENCO had been importing uranium ore from the Rössing mine in Namibia. The case was expected to be ready by the end of 1985 but was delayed because URENCO argued that, despite having enriched uranium of Namibian origin since 1980, it was impossible to tell where specific consignments came from. When the case finally reached court in July 1986, the Dutch government took URENCO's line, claiming not to have known where the uranium had been mined.

Uranium tails contracts with Russia

According to Greenpeace, Urenco has a standing contract with Russia for the disposal of radioactive waste. In reality, these contracts do not relate to the disposal of waste, but to the sale of depleted uranium tails, which are re-enriched to natural uranium equivalent. As the enricher, Russia would be the owner of any radioactive waste that results from this process. In March 2009, there were protests about the largest-ever load of depleted uranium hexafluoride being transported from Germany to the Siberian town Seversk.

See also

• Depleted uranium

External links

• Urenco
• LES