Stichting Laka

Publicatie Laka-bibliotheek:
Underfeeding at Urenco`s Gronau uranium enrichment plant results in reasons for tails export to Russia becoming obsolate

Auteur	Peter Diehl, Wise uranium
	-
Datum	februari 2007
Classificatie	2.01.8.50/08 (DUITSLAND - GRONAU)

Underfeeding at Urenco‘s Gronau uranium enrichment plant
results in reasons for tails exports to Russia becoming obsolete

by Peter Diehl

Abstract

Urenco Deutschland GmbH has disclosed that it is underfeeding its Gronau (Germany) 
uranium enrichmentplant since 2004: while from 1991 to 2002, the natural uranium feed 
consumption of the plant virtually followed the continuous capacity increase of the 
plant,  the feed consumption no longer followed the capacity increase from 2004 - it 
even began to decline. Urenco explains this with changes in product and/or tails 
assays, without giving any details.
Given the rapid increase of the price of fresh uranium, underfeeding may make sense, 
since it allows to reduce natural uranium consumption at the expense of increased 
separation work. A closer analysis shows that the observed decline in feed consumption 
must be mainly caused from a reduced tails assay. As most of Urenco‘s depleted uranium 
tails are exported to Russia for re-enrichment, a reduced assay of the tails exported has 
serious consequences on the viability of any re-enrichment of these tails. It turns out 
that the assay of the tails delivered to Russia comes close to the assay that Urenco most 
likely  has contracted with Russia for re-enrichment on Urenco‘s behalf. Therefore, 
unless the  contractual arrangements have been changed, almost nothing remains to 
be re-enriched  in Russia on these tails on Urenco‘s behalf, and the amountof 
recovered natural uranium sent back to Urenco tends towards zero.
This means that the official justification for sending the tails to Russia (recovery of 
usable uranium from the tails) has become obsolete. Since the transfer of tails to 
Russia rather continues, this can be seen as a further hint on the true reason for these 
exports: to provide a cheap tails disposition route to Urenco.

Deze publicatie is digitaal beschikbaar in de Laka-biblitoheek maar de pdf staat niet online.
Mail ons (info@laka.org) als u de pdf toegestuurd wilt krijgen (met onderwerp, volgnummer en titel). U kunt natuurlijk ook langskomen.