By Mervyn L. Tano,
International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management (www.iiirm.org)

On July 12, 2011 staff of the Department of Science and Engineering and members of the Science and Technology Committee of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation toured the AREVA fuel fabrication in Richland, Washington. I’ll cover the tour in more detail later but for the nonce, I’d like to report on a most interesting discussion of uranium mining that took place very late in the debriefing after the tour.

The discussion started with committee members Alvina Huesties’ and Althea Huesties-Wolf‘’s comment that although the tour helped them see that certain operations of the nuclear fuel cycle could be done in an environmentally sound manner, they still had serious concerns about the unresolved problems of uranium mining in Indian country. They are intimately aware of the devastating impacts of uranium mining on the people, lands, and water of the Spokane Tribe and are familiar with the Navajo Nation’s experience. These front-end concerns cannot but have an effect on how they view the entire fuel cycle.
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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.
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