AREVA Med, an AREVA subsidiary, announced today the future construction of a facility in France that will produce on a large-scale medical grade lead 212.

Why Lead-212?

Lead-212 is a rare radioactive isotope that lies at the heart of promising nuclear medical research to develop new cancer treatments. Over the past few years, AREVA Med and its partners demonstrated the benefits of Lead-212 for use in innovative alpha radio-immunotherapy to combat cancer.

What does AREVA know about nuclear medicine?

By relying on its experience in radiochemistry and nuclear engineering, AREVA has developed innovative processes to extract rare isotopes derived from its industrial activities.

Why is AREVA building a facility to produce large quantities of Lead-212?

In nuclear medicine, the development of new treatments is dictated by isotope availability. With this new facility scheduled to open in 2013, rare Lead-212 will become more widely available and allow for the creation of new targeted therapies for patients.

Check out the press release and other blogs on this exciting project

An in-depth report yesterday from Business Week profiled AREVA CEO Anne Lauvergeon and what she has been doing to build the world leader in nuclear energy, and importantly, what her plans are for the future as the prospects for new nuclear improve.

Anne Lauvergeon (photo credit: BusinessWeek)

Business Week’s Carol Matlack writes:

“Anne Lauvergeon, chief executive of the French nuclear giant AREVA, is getting close to the payoff on a colossal decade-long bet. In 2001, when she engineered the three-way merger that turned AREVA into a one-stop shop selling nuclear technology to the world, many found the idea far-fetched. The U.S hadn’t ordered a nuclear plant since the 1979 Three Mile Island accident. And after Chernobyl in 1986, business dried up just about everywhere outside pro-nuclear France…

Undeterred by the nuclear drought, Lauvergeon put AREVA’s engineers to work on a bold new technology called the Evolutionary Pressurized Reactor. The EPR is super-powerful, fuel-efficient, and loaded with safety features such as a reinforced concrete shell designed, post-September 11, to withstand a direct hit by a jumbo jet. Now the 50-year-old CEO is rolling out the EPR just as the nuclear industry awakens from its slumber.”

But AREVA is not just building an industry in France, Matlack reports on AREVA’s development, support, and expansion of the nuclear industry in the United States.

“Lauvergeon has used keen political and marketing instincts to keep AREVA’s U.S. growth on track. Fluent in English, she regularly meets with U.S. industry groups and politicians in states where AREVA operates. Last July she joined then-Virginia Governor Tim Kaine to break ground on a joint-venture, with Northrop Gurmman, to supply components for U.S. plants build by AREVA and others.”

Continue the piece, “AREVA’s High-End Bet on Nuclear Power,” here.

We really love the art work of PopAtomic Studios…. Thier effort is “a series of artistic experiments in my community to see if I can shift perception of atomic energy using only art and and creative input from some amazing artist friends!”

PopAtomic.org

Their mix of art and science is just fun. And check out their growing lists of artistic experiments here.

We would like to spotlight a post from the blog “Into the Breach” about recent presentation by Jacques Besanainou, CEO of AREVA North America.

The blog’s author Kendall Miller writes:

“Reviving the nuclear power industry is key to true energy security. When France faced the problem of energy security they decided to go nuclear as fast as they could…

AREVA is making major investments in the US nuclear industry. They are building a fabrication facility for large steel components at Newport News. They are building an enrichment facility in Idaho. And they are building a Mixed-Oxide fuel plant in South Carolina. When they started doing these things they found that the pool of nuclear-qualified suppliers has dried up over the years. Now they are having vendor fairs in order to attract new vendors into the nuclear industry supply chain.

Nuclear power is CO2-free, power secure, and creates jobs, jobs, and more jobs.”

Read the post, “Jacques Besnainou at the Richland ANS” for the whole story.

As major announcements roll out of the White House and Department of Energy in support of expanding nuclear energy in the United States, many regional and local newspapers have expressed positive opinions and support for this growth.

An editorial from The Philadelphia Inquirer argued that:

“The point is that increasing the nation’s reliance on nuclear power, or wind, or solar, requires disincentives to using fossil fuels. It also requires convincing states like Pennsylvania that new jobs in wind, solar, and nuclear will be created quickly to supplant those lost in extracting and delivering the old, polluting fossil fuels.”

From the Lynchburg News & Advance in Virginia, “Obama Sees the Light on Nuclear Power”:

“Earlier this week, President Barack Obama finally … finally … acknowledged a fact many Americans have known for years: that nuclear power is essential to this nation’s future… What is so significant about this step is that these two plants would be the first nuclear power facilities to be built in the United States in more than 30 years, following the Three Mile Island accident in the late 1970s.”

From the Marietta Times in Marietta, Ohio, “America needs to build nuclear power plants”

“Good move building nuclear plants again after 30+ years of not building one. I was at Department of Energy during the “Three Mile Island” incident, and our mentality following that is similar to an individual who says, “since I had a car accident, I am not going to drive or ride in a car again.”

From this weekend’s Wall Streeet Journal Op Ed:

“We’ve essentially fallen 10 years behind the rest of the world in nuclear technology, but the Obama administration’s decision to support nuclear will finally get the ball rolling. Within a decade we may very well catch up with the rest of the world in developing the energy technology of the 21st century.”

- William Tucker, Author “Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America’s Energy Odyssey“

This speech has been getting noticed ever since literally the moment it occurred, being tweeted and covered by various press…but the TED folks just put the video up.

Here is a key quote (with bolding being from us):

“So let’s look at this fourth factor — this is going to be a key one — and this is the amount of CO2 put out per each unit of energy. And so the question is, can you actually get that to zero? If you burn coal, no. If you burn natural gas, no. Almost every way we make electricity today, except for the emerging renewables and nuclear, puts out CO2. And so, what we’re going to have to do at a global scale, is create a new system. And so, we need energy miracles.

Now, when I use the term miracle, I don’t mean something that’s impossible. The microprocessor is a miracle. The personal computer is a miracle. The internet and it’s services are a miracle. So, the people here have participated in the creation of many miracles.”

Yesterday, Radio WHYY from Philadelphia, Pa., featured a conversation on nuclear power renaissance in the United States. Alan Hanson, AREVA Executive Vice-President for technologies and used fuel management, and Sharon Squassoni, Senior Fellow and Directors of the Proliferation Prevention Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, debated key nuclear energy issues and its potential for expansion following recent support from the Obama administration.

To learn more about the nuclear energy debate and critical questions, listen to the program, Radio Times, here.

By Lisa Peterson, Marketing Specialist, AREVA Federal Services

AREVA is the only company in the world to work in every stage of the nuclear fuel cycle, from mining uranium, enrichment and fuel fabrication to reactor construction and maintenance, and recycling used fuel. What’s more, AREVA’s expertise extends to developing solutions for safely and effectively packaging and transporting nuclear material.

AREVA Federal Services is part of AREVA’s back end business which manages a wide range of operations focused on the latter part of the nuclear cycle, from recycling used fuel to developing packaging and transportation solutions for used fuel. Remediating former weapons production sites, such as the Hanford and Savannah River are central parts of our business. This work together with the renaissance of nuclear power will increase demand for innovative packaging and transportation solutions.
read more…

CNN has posted online two juxtaposed opinion pieces that argue nuclear energy issues.

In the first op-ed, “Nuclear Power’s Time has come,” CNN interviews author and environmentalist, Stewart Brand, on his support of nuclear energy.

Looking for a surefire way to cut greenhouse gases, Brand said the alternative to burning coal became clear: “We already had a very good supplier of …electricity. It worked like mad and was as clean as it could be — and that was nuclear.”

Brand concludes: “Look, you’re not going to cure greenhouse gases with nuclear, but curing greenhouse gases without nuclear is approximately impossible.”

In the contrasting opinion piece, Mark Z. Jacobson, a Stanford University professor, discusses why “Nuclear Power is Too Risky.”

Jacobson writes on how the planet can be powered by renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and geothermal alone, saying “If our nation wants to reduce global warming, air pollution and energy instability, we should invest only in the best energy options. Nuclear energy isn’t one of them.”

Both pieces debate the current issues concerning nuclear energy. We’ll let you compare the “nuclear argument” yourself.

Let us know what you think.