“AREVA supports an integrated approach that ensures options including recycling, interim storage, and disposal,” Executive V.P. Dr. Alan Hanson today told the members of a Blue Ribbon Commission subcommittee. “Commercial recycling of used nuclear fuel has a long, successful, safe and secure history. AREVA has successfully and profitably operated and supported commercial recycling facilities for more than four decades.”

Hanson laid out the reasons why recycling is a sold option as part of an integrated used fuel management system in the United States. Today the U.S. is focused on a once-through strategy for managing used fuel, meaning that nuclear fuel is used once and then sent for disposal. However, most of the energy still remains after one cycle, and this material can be recycled.
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We noticed with some surprise, this article in the Washington Post this week.. It reports: “Utilities across the country are building dozens of old-style coal plants that will cement the industry’s standing as the largest industrial source of climate-changing gases for years to come.”

In short, the article documents that a wave of at least 15 new coal plants will be produced in the U.S., this “despite growing public wariness over the high environmental and social costs of fossil fuels, demonstrated by mine disasters in West Virginia and the gulf oil spill.” This is the largest expansion of coal plants in two decades.

The short-term financial gain of building cheap fossil plants doesn’t have a “clean coal” solution anywhere in sight either as “widespread application of carbon-neutralizing technologies for coal plants remains at least 15 to 20 years away.” The article specifically goes into the hidden long-term costs this will bring as these new plants would “generate about 125 million tons of greenhouse gases annually, according to emissions figures from utilities and the Center for Global Development. That’s the equivalent of putting 22 million additional automobiles on the road.”

And by way of comparison, an AREVA EPR nuclear plant would avoid about 10 million tons of CO2 per year each year from being emitted into our air.

In another important step to deliver renewable energy and jobs to Washington state, ADAGE, the biopower joint venture between AREVA and Duke Energy, announced today that it has signed its first long-term biomass fuel supply agreement with Green Diamond Resource Company, who owns and manages timberland in the immediate area.

Through this agreement, a portion of the woody biomass for the ADAGE Mason County facility would come from wood residuals. This material is what remains in the forest after harvest operations, and it will be removed by Green Diamond Forestry ensuring compliance with Washington forest practice regulations and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative Standard.

The proposed Mason County facility would bring 55 megawatts of renewable biomass generation and addition to a $250 million initial investment in Mason County. The project is expected to create more than 400 direct jobs during construction and more than 100 direct jobs during permanent operation and will use state-of-the-art environmental controls to protect public health.

For more information check out the ADAGE website where you can find much more on biomass and how it contributes to clean energy generation.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission held a public meeting in Boise, Idaho, on Aug. 9 to hear from the public, elected officials and other stakeholders on the draft environmental impact statement (EIS) for the AREVA Eagle Rock Enrichment Facility under development near Idaho Falls. The NRC held this meeting in Boise at the behest of a Boise-based antinuclear group in addition to a previously scheduled public forum in Idaho Falls on Aug. 12.

AREVA welcomes these opportunities in Boise, Idaho Falls and elsewhere to allow people to learn more about the Eagle Rock project. We are developing a state-of-the-art uranium enrichment facility using proven, reliable and safe technology to produce fuel for commercial nuclear power plants.

Representatives for several elected officials, including Idaho Gov. C. L. “Butch” Otter, members of the Idaho delegation and others expressed their support for the Eagle Rock project at the Boise meeting. Also many members of Idaho’s business community praised the positive economic impact the project would have, including the creation of thousands of jobs. Others expressed concerns about the potential environmental impact of the facility. While views ran the spectrum, this well-run meeting by the NRC offered a good opportunity for stakeholders to learn more about the project.

“AREVA is excited to be a part of Idaho’s business community, and we look forward to continuing our work with the state and the people of southeastern Idaho,” said Bob Poyser, vice president of regional affairs at AREVA. “We plan to build and operate a safe, environmentally sustainable, world class facility that is important to America’s energy security, important to our American utility customers and important to the advancement of Idaho’s continued leadership in nuclear programs.”

Click here for more information on the Eagle Rock project.

In an opinion piece that appeared in the Washington Post today, Slate columnist, Nina Shen Rastogi asks “What are nuclear energy’s green credentials?”

And after discussing the issues, Rastogi concludes:


“The Lantern doesn’t find herself particularly freaked out by atomic energy. The long-term waste conundrum seems more pressing: After all, isn’t the notion that you don’t bequeath problems to your descendants a major tenet of environmentalism? At the same time, global warming is itself a dire legacy, and every energy technology has its pitfalls. So if nuclear power can play a role in cooling our planet, the Lantern thinks it deserves to stay on the table.”

Find more of Rastogi’s anaylsis here.

By Jarret Adams

About a dozen members of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future yesterday toured the Department of Energy’s Hanford site near Richland, Wash. This panel, which is charged with developing a recommendation on managing the nation’s nuclear waste, heard testimony from local government officials and American Indian tribes during the course of its third public meeting.

The message to the panel from the local speakers was that the government must develop a plan for moving waste from the Hanford site now that Yucca Mountain has been “off the table.” Others called for reviewing the decision to stop the Yucca Mountain project.

Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire echoed that sentiment in her testimony today and encouraged the panel “to base any recommendations on science and technology, not politics.”

Whether or not the government restarts the Yucca project, the nation ultimately will need a repository. However, if we recycle our nation’s used nuclear fuel we could divide by at least four the volume of waste bound for repository. We also would avoid the need to develop additional repositories, perhaps indefinitely. For more on the potential for recycling, click here.

AREVA is active in several projects related to the remediation of the Hanford site, employing its state-of-the-art technologies for chemical clean-up and vitrification of the radioactive waste.

In addition, we manufacture high-quality fuel for nuclear plants at our facility in Richland, adjacent to the site.

by Curtis Roberts, Renewables Communications Manager, North America

AREVA’s recent agreement with the province of New Brunswick and the utility NB Power reveals an innovative approach to meeting current and future carbon-free energy demand.

As you would expect from AREVA, the agreement includes building a nuclear power plant, in this case, one of AREVA’s mid-sized light water reactor designs. What you may not have expected in the proposal is the generation of carbon-free power from two sources in AREVA’s renewable energy portfolio: offshore wind and forest energy.

You’re not familiar with AREVA’s renewable energy portfolio?

AREVA was the first company to develop and install 5 MW offshore wind turbines specifically designed to operate in the harsh sea conditions. AREVA is the global leader in developing and generating power from biomass energy sources. In solar thermal energy, AREVA’s CLFR technology was recently selected to build the world’s largest solar booster at a plant in Australia.

This marrying of nuclear and renewable carbon-free energy generation into a comprehensive AREVA Clean Energy Park is becoming the wave of the future, and is the third example of AREVA’s concept.

Back in April 2010, AREVA and the Fresno Nuclear Energy Group (FNEG) in California announced a Memorandum of Understanding to build a Clean Energy Park with an AREVA U.S. EPR™ nuclear plant, but also a solar plant to generate energy and power an onsite desalinization facility producing clean agricultural water.

In June 2009, AREVA joined with Duke Energy, USEC, UniStar Nuclear Energy, and the Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative (SODI) in an ongoing Clean Energy Park proposal at a Department of Energy site in Ohio combining nuclear with biomass power from regional sustainable forest energy sources.

There’s another benefit with AREVA’s approach: regional economic stimulus. Along with energy, AREVA sees the Clean Energy Park concept as an effective producer of local investment and employment through construction activities, ongoing operations and domestic supply chain development.

As the challenge and demand for carbon-free energy continues to increase, the solution looks less like a single hammer response, and more like the toolbox of customized carbon-free sources in an AREVA Clean Energy Park.

In an announcement concerning the Nuclear Energy Technology Roadmap published today, the International Energy Agency declared that “nuclear energy is one of the key low-carbon energy technologies.”

As part of the IEA scenario to reach a 50% cut in energy-related CO2 emissions by 2050, the organization has proposed that nuclear energy capacity grow threefold, to 1,200 GWe, providing 24% of world electricity production in 40 years time. The IEA described this growth as “ambitious but achievable.”

The press release notes that challenges remain to this expansion, including policy, financial, and public acceptance, but “the roadmap finds that nuclear power is a mature, low-carbon technology that is ready to expand rapidly over the coming decades. The latest reactor designs, now under construction around the world, build on over 50 years of technology development. The roadmap notes that these designs will need to be fully established as reliable and competitive electricity generators over the next few years if they are to become the mainstays of nuclear expansion after 2020.”

While it is not summer solstice quiet yet, it is Global Wind Day. As part of an event designed to raise worldwide awareness of the benefits of wind energy, the American Wind Energy Association is encouraging people to learn more about this renewable energy source. More info here.

Offshore Wind Turbine

For another look at wind, this video offers a great view of the offshore, 5 megawatt wind turbine developed and built by AREVA. As part of our commitment to a portfolio of CO2-free energy solutions, AREVA recently confirmed its commitment to developing this important, renewable energy source.

“Energy Renewal”
Finally, a call to action for Americans to take responsibility for energy use and our energy future from some of the nations most prominent figures in energy; Dr. Gordon Bjorkman from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Mike Wallace Chairman of Unistar Nuclear Energy, Vice Admiral John Grossenbacher, Directory Idaho National Laboratory, and Ellen Vancko of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
– from energyontrial.com