Georges Besse II, AREVA’s new enrichment plant inaugurated in December 2010, met a new milestone end of 2012 with more than 2.5 million separative work units (SWU) per year of installed production capacity reached.
The GBII South plant is ramping up according to schedule, AREVA said, with on average two additional cascades commissioned every month. At the end of 2012, about 70% of the South plant was in production.
For the North plant, the civil engineering work and the Centrifuge Assembly Building were finalised and operational readiness testing was also completed. The North plant is expected to come on line in first quarter 2013.
Thanks to the modularity of the process, several cascades can be commissioned each month until the full production capacity of 7.5 million SWU is reached in 2016.
Guillaume Dureau, AREVA’s Senior Executive Vice President of the Front End business group, said: "The capacity milestone reached shows AREVA’s continuous commitment towards enrichment activities to ensure security of supply for its customers."