URENCO USA
P.O. Box 1789, Eunice, New Mexico, United States

Urenco is an international supplier of enrichment services and fuel cycle products for the civil nuclear industry, serving utility customers worldwide who provide low carbon electricity through nuclear generation.

What we do

We provide safe, cost effective and reliable uranium enrichment services and fuel cycle products for power generation within a framework of high environmental, social responsibility and corporate governance standards.  Our customers typically supply us with natural uranium, uranium hexafluoride, which we then enrich to international specifications, using centrifuge technology designed and deployed by Urenco. Through the flexible operation of this technology, we are also able to provide products and services beyond enrichment. For example, by conserving natural uranium and providing enriched uranium product.  We also use our technical expertise to more broadly serve the nuclear industry. We have subsidiaries dedicated to responsible nuclear stewardship, we produce stable isotope products with medical, industrial and research applications and we are developing a micro modular reactor (U-Battery) in collaboration with a consortium of partners.

Our global operations

We are unique in the global enrichment market in having four enrichment facilities in four different countries. These are located in Germany (Urenco Deutschland), the Netherlands (Urenco Nederland), the UK (Urenco UK) and the USA (UUSA). Our Head Office is located close to London in the UK and we have a marketing office in Arlington in the USA.  We are committed to leading the way in responsible uranium stewardship and have several subsidiaries dedicated to overseeing our work in this area. Urenco ChemPlants will operate our Tails Management Facility in the UK, which will deconvert the by-product of enrichment into a more stable form for long term storage for future enrichment or final disposal, and Urenco Nuclear Stewardship, also based in the UK, is responsible for the management of nuclear materials, decommissioning and recycling.  Our stable isotopes business (Urenco Stable Isotopes) in the Netherlands draws on our expertise and capabilities in centrifuge technology to produce a variety of stable isotopes for medical, industrial and research applications.  We also own a 50% interest in Enrichment Technology Company (ETC), a joint venture company with Orano. ETC provides enrichment plant design services and gas centrifuge technology for enrichment plants through its subsidiaries in France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK.

The nuclear fuel supply chain explains Urenco’s key part in enabling the generation of reliable, low carbon electricity for consumers worldwide.

• Uranium ore is extracted, purified and milled to become uranium oxide (U3O8).
• U3O8 is chemically converted into uranium hexafluoride (UF6), also known as feed, and transported to one our enrichment facilities.
• Our enrichment process starts with the arrival of our customers’ UF6 at our enrichment facilities. We heat UF6 to turn it into a gas and feed it into our gas centrifuges. The centrifuge separates the two isotopes contained in uranium: uranium235 (U235) and uranium238 (U238). The lighter U235 is typically enriched to up to 5%, which is sufficient to sustain a continuous fission reaction in a nuclear power plant. The flexibility of our centrifuges allows us to conserve feed material and therefore provide enriched uranium product and natural uranium in addition to enrichment services
• The customers’ enriched uranium is transported to fuel fabricators, where it is converted into pellets before being loaded into fuel rods.
• The fuel rods are transported to nuclear power stations, where they are placed into reactors and used to generate steam. This drives turbines which in turn power electricity generators.
• At the end of the nuclear fuel supply chain, nuclear power stations provide a reliable source of low carbon electricity for homes, schools, hospitals, offices and industries around the world.