Yesterday, President Obama said in a BBC interview: “Without going into specifics, what I do believe is that Iran has legitimate energy concerns, legitimate aspirations. On the other hand, the international community has a very real interest in preventing a nuclear arms race in the region.”
Thus, we thought that this would be a good time to highlight AREVA’s commitment to non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, and our being a partner in the US Department of Energy’s Global Threat Reduction Initiative. As it says on the DOE’s site:
The mission of the Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI) is to reduce and protect vulnerable nuclear and radiological materials located at civilian sites worldwide. GTRI helps the Department of Energy achieve its Nuclear Security Goal to prevent the acquisition of nuclear and radiological materials…Three key subprograms of GTRI –Convert, Remove, and Protect—provide a comprehensive approach to denying terrorists access to nuclear and radiological materials.
As part of this commitment to remove weapons-grade material from stockpiles, AREVA has partnered with the Shaw Group to build the MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. This facility when complete with convert the weapons-grade plutonium into MOX fuel for use in commercial nuclear power plants. This $4.9 billion project now under construction employs some 1,000 workers and is being built for DOE.
Tags: Barack Obama, BBC, Department of Energy, MOX Fuel Reprocessing, Non-proliferation, Shaw AREVA MOX Services, Shaw Group