AREVA has been in the US nuclear business for a long time

Besnainou, who is an active member of the French Nuclear Energy Society (SFEN) and a strong supporter of Young Generation networking activities, has applied to succed to Mr. Sanders as President of the American Nuclear Society (ANS) in 2010.

Jacques Besnainou was appointed President of AREVA Inc. and President and CEO of AREVA NC Inc. on September 1st, 2008. Mr. Besnainou holds Master of Science degrees in Mathematics, Engineering and Public Policy from Ecole Polytechnique and Ecole des Mines – France’s leading engineering schools. He has acquired nearly 20 years of management and systems engineering experience in both France and the United States.

Mr. Besnainou began his career in 1987 as a management consultant for a French investment bank, but was shortly thereafter appointed as an advisor to the French Ministry of Industry for civilian nuclear affairs. In 1993, he joined the Ecobilan Group, an environmental consulting firm specializing in life cycle assessments. He went on to successfully form and develop Ecobilan’s US subsidiary, and relocated to the Washington, DC area. After becoming the CEO of the Ecobilan Group, he negotiated its sale to PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2000. Mr. Besnainou then joined COGEMA, Inc. in 2001 as Executive Vice-President, in charge of used nuclear fuel management operations in the United States. In 2005, Mr. Besnainou was appointed at the AREVA Nuclear Executive Committee in charge of the Back End sector.

First of all, may we have an overview of AREVA presence in the United-States?

Jacques Besnainou – AREVA has been in the US nuclear business for a long time. This market is essential because its growth prospects are important and also because it is considered as a reference in the world. The choices made here may have a large influence on other States decisions. AREVA is now leading the nuclear American market, in front of General Electric / Hitachi and Toshiba / Westinghouse, with a turnover multiplied by four in just five years (2 billion dollars in 2007).

AREVA has 6000 employees, located in more than 45 industrial and commercial sites in 20 States. In 2008, more than 700 people have been recruited and it is scheduled to recruit 500 to 700 more per year in the next five years. The main technical specialties concerned are Mechanics, Nuclear physics, Chemistry, Soldering, Electronics and Information Technology.

AREVA is now supplying the half of replacing equipments (steam generators, pressurizers and pressure vessels head), is the longtime leader in nuclear measurements (CANBERRA) and holds 25% and 50% of market shares in PWR fuel supply and nuclear waste interim storage (TN International).

What is the current situation of the nuclear energy field in the United-States?

JB – In 2008, 104 nuclear power plants are connected to the US grid, thus representing a power capacity of 100.5 GWe. This nuclear fleet is made of 34 Boiling Water Reactors and 70 Pressurized Water Reactors. Most of these reactors are located in the east half of the country and are present in 31 of the 50 States.

The nuclear part of the electricity produced in the US is 19%, with a total of 800 TWh produced in 2008. The average of the nuclear fleet is 28 years old. Even if no nuclear power plant has been built for a long time, the share of nuclear energy produced remains steady, thanks to an increase in the performances of the plants: increase of the capacity factor due to an optimization of the fuel reloading outage periods, improvements in safety and added production capacity thanks to power uprates.

This high performance is mostly the result of the deregulation of the energy market, which enabled mergers and acquisitions. As described in the chart below, 72% of the nuclear electricity market is now held by 10 utilities.

What is the stage of the nuclear renaissance in the US and what are the opportunities for AREVA?

JB – There are now about 30 new nuclear projects in the United-States and it could increase the installed power capacity by 24 GWe by 2020. 8 of these projects concern the EPR reactors technology:

– Constellation / Calvert Cliffs (Maryland) and Nine Mile Point (New York)

– Ameren UE / Callaway (Missouri)

– Amarillo Power / Amarillo (Texas) (2 units)

– Alternate Energy Holding Inc. / Bruneau (Idaho)

– PP&L / Susquehanna (Pennsylvania)

– Duke (Ohio)

The EPR reactor Design Certification has been submitted to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission on December 11th, 2007 and could be obtained by 2011/2012. The first EPR reactor in the US could therefore be on-line in 2015.

In order to make this happen, AREVA (67%) and Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding (33%) have decided to invest 400 million USD in the supply chain with the creation of a new large components building factory in Newport News, Virginia. This 300 000 m2 plant, based on the Chalon Saint Marcel plant design in France, will employ 500 people and will be able to supply the US nuclear market with pressure vessels, steam generators and pressurizers.

Concerning the existing nuclear fleet in the US, AREVA Inc. is also the leader in nuclear outage and repair services as well as in component supply and replacement. AREVA has participated in the maintenance programs at more than three quarters of the 104 operating nuclear power plants over the past five years and holds about 30% of the reactors and services market shares.

Concerning the fuel cycle, what is the position of the Obama Administration?

JB – President Bush has indeed not only supported new nuclear projects with the promulgation of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, but he has also been in favor of a new spent fuel recycling policy, which is not performed in the US since 1977. The spent fuel is therefore stored safely in pools and in dry casks on nuclear sites across the country. AREVA, via its TN International subsidiary, is the leader in the US interim dry storage market, by supplying more than 50% of the transportation and storage systems needed.

The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) initiative has been launched by President Bush in February 2006, in order to support nuclear energy expansion throughout the world, including countries with currently no nuclear power capacity installed, but with reducing in the same time the risks of nuclear proliferation due to sensitive fuel cycle operations such as uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing. The GNEP initiative promotes an upgrade of these technologies so that they will be even more proliferation resistant, and it would put in place a strong international control, in order to guarantee the nuclear fuel supply to new nuclear countries that have agreed to not develop these technologies.

There are also other strong advantages of spent fuel recycling: reduction of the need for natural resources, increase of energy independence by reusing the energy contained in spent fuel, decrease of the amount and toxicity of High Level Waste produced. In that case, the capacity of Yucca Mountain repository could be multiplied by four or five. Besides, AREVA is proud to provide the US Department Of Energy (DOE) operational design support for the future repository surface facilities at Yucca Mountain.

Even if the Obama Administration is less in favor of nuclear energy than the previous Administration and more in favor of renewable energies, it is supporting all non CO2-emitting energy sources and it has clearly understood that reducing greenhouse gases emissions would not be possible without nuclear power. That is the reason why the Secretary of Energy has confirmed in 2008 his interest in Recycling.

The recycling technology proposed by AREVA is called COEX process. It is based on the La Hague and MELOX reprocessing and recycling plant in France and also the Rokkasho Mura plant in Japan, but with some enhancements that would increase the proliferation resistance of the plant, since uranium and plutonium are extracted together and precipitated into a single solid in the same time. After some transformations, the resulting fuel, which is called MOX, could either be used in Light Water Reactors or in fast reactors.

Concerning MOX fuel, what is the situation of the MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) under construction by AREVA in the US?

JB – This project was born from the decision between the United-States and Russia to eliminate 34 metric tons of weapon grade plutonium, considered in excess of their defense needs, by transforming it into civil nuclear fuel. In order to confirm the feasibility of this plutonium disposition program, four assembly tests have been manufactured in France (Cadarache and MELOX plant in Marcoule), and are now under irradiation in Catawba commercial nuclear power plants (EUROFAB project).

Shaw AREVA MOX Services LLC, a joint venture created between AREVA and Shaw Group, contracted with the DOE in May 2008 for an amount of 2.7 billion USD, for the construction of a MOX fuel fabrication facility on Savannah River Site in Aiken County, South Carolina. The construction work began August 1st, 2007, and the plant should go into operation in 2016. The MOX fuel produced from weapon grade plutonium will then be “burnt” in the commercial nuclear plants operated by Duke Power.

Is AREVA also present in the front end nuclear market?

JB – The front end of the fuel cycle is actually, in terms of incomes, the first activity of AREVA in the United-States. AREVA supplies to its customers uranium ore, conversion and enrichment services, and ready to use fuel assemblies. Only fuel fabrication operations are now performed by AREVA inside the US, thanks to its two production plants located in Lynchburg, Virginia, and Richland, Washington. The other activities are performed by other AREVA units situated abroad. Finally, AREVA gets 20% of the national uranium market and 30% of US nuclear plants use fuel assemblies.

In order to be a stronger actor in the field of enrichment services, AREVA decided in 2008 to build a new uranium enrichment facility inside the United-States. The needs for uranium enrichment are now estimated at 14.5 million of Separative Work Unit (SWU) in the US. With the end of the HEU-LEU agreement with Russia in 2013 and the nuclear Renaissance, the previsions for uranium enrichment needs are growing. It is also important to point out that 60% of the current enrichment capacities worldwide (about 45 million of SWU) will have to be replaced before 2015. That is why AREVA has decided to build a new enrichment facility in the US.

This new plant, called Eagle Rock Enrichment Facility (EREF), will be built in Idaho and will be a duplication of the Georges Besse II plant, which is under construction on the Tricastin site in France. The chosen technology is the ultracentrifugation, developed by Enrichment Technology Company (ETC), a joint venture between AREVA and URENCO. This technology has a proven return of experience in Germany, Netherlands and United-Kingdom and is now considered the most efficient since it consumes 50 times less energy than gaseous diffusion and the process does not need any cooling water. EREF will start operating in 2014 and will reach its full capacity of 3 million of SWU in 2019.

What are AREVA’s situation and ambitions in this field?

JB – The T&D market represents AREVA third source of incomes in the United-States, and this market is growing rapidly, about 4.5% per year. As you know from recent blackout events in California or in New York, the transmission network is ageing and needs large investments to be modernized.

AREVA is well situated to satisfy its customers expectations, with 790 employees located on five production plants across the country. AREVA T&D designs, manufactures and supplies a complete range of products, systems and services in the transfer of electricity from generators to end-users: switchgears, circuit breakers, surge arrestors, distribution transformers and dispatching systems. We are already leading the transmission systems management field. For example, two thirds of the American utilities use AREVA products for their transmission networks. Large investments have also been realized in order to gain some market shares in the high voltage field.

AREVA is also developing a strong know-how in smart grids, a solution able to significantly reduce the global energy demand, by adjusting more efficiently energy production to energy consumption. To achieve this innovative project, AREVA T&D branch in Redmond, Washington, has developed a very profitable partnership with Microsoft.

Is there any other business in which AREVA would like to develop its activities?

JB – AREVA has indeed the ambition to develop a portfolio of non CO2 emitting energy sources. Along with nuclear power, we invest in renewable energy sources through acquisitions (51% in MULTIBRID, a German offshore windmills manufacturer for instance) or joint ventures creations.

In September 2008, we have created with Duke Energy a 50/50 joint venture, called ADAGE, in order to develop biomass power stations in the United-States. The target is to propose a standardized fleet of biomass plants that will generate electricity from wood waste. AREVA will be in charge of the design and the construction of the biomass power plants which will be operated by Duke Power.