French multinational nuclear services provider AREVA on Wednesday announced the formation of a new subsidiary to manage its operations in the United States. The move is part of the troubled company’s broader restructuring, in which it is focusing on nuclear fuel cycle work and selling off its reactor business.
Sam Shakir, an executive with AREVA for five years who already leads the company’s U.S. business, is now CEO of AREVA Nuclear Materials. The subsidiary is housed under what the company calls New AREVA, which in October separated from the AREVA NP segment that will ultimately be sold to French power utility Eléctricité de France SA for over 2.5 billion euros.
AREVA Nuclear Materials will encompass five business segments: AREVA D&D, based in Washington, D.C., will provide decommissioning and dismantlement services for U.S. nuclear plants; TN Americas (previously AREVA TN), based in Maryland, provides used nuclear fuel and radioactive waste storage, transportation, and field services; AREVA Federal Services, based in North Carolina, is a federal contractor for nuclear fuel cycle and environmental management services; Mining, Conversion, Enrichment Sales, based in Virginia, provides nuclear fuel to domestic utilities; and AREVA Med, based in Texas, is developing radioisotopes for cancer treatments.
Those U.S. business lines have about 560 employees and produced in excess of $900 million in sales last year, according to the company.
“We’re actually very excited about all of our businesses, because we see opportunities for growth in all of them,” Shakir said in a telephone interview Wednesday.
AREVA Nuclear Materials’ remit covers a broad swath of projects, from dismantlement of the reactor vessel at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, to sales of the NUHOMS used fuel storage system, to the partnership with CB&I in building the Department of Energy facility intended to convert 34 metric tons of surplus nuclear weapon-usable plutonium into commercial reactor fuel.
