The first of its kind in the United States, the Urenco Uranium Enrichment Plant held a ribbon cutting this afternoon. State leaders and Presidents and CEO's from nuclear companies from across the globe came to the event.
So what is uranium enrichment?
"Our experience, once a community gets used to use they tend to like us. They tend to understand what we're doing. What the major objection to nuclear is actually not understanding, not having conceived, perceived what this industry is about," explains Helmut Engelbrecht, CEO of URENCO Ltd.
Nuclear energy can be used to generate electricity, but uranium enrichment is the first step.
"It starts with them taking the uranium out of the ground, then it gets processed by adding fluoride to it," says Don Johnson, Communications Manager for URENCO USA.
From there the uranium hexafluoride powder mix will be shipped to the Urenco plant in New Mexico to be heated into a gas.
"That gas goes into a centrifuge, the centrifuge spins the gas," says Johnson.
The uranium gas splits into 2 different isotopes; 238 and 235. The heavier isotope, 238 moves to the outside.
"The 238 is drawn off, the 235 is drawn off. The 235 is what we call enriched just a little,” explains Johnson.
This spinning process is done several more times. Once the uranium is enriched at the plant behind me, it's compressed into a pellet. The pellet may look small, but it packs a big punch. One fuel pellet provides as much energy as 149 gallons of oil, one ton of coal or 17,000 or cubic feet of natural gas.
"This is the most eloquent technology I have ever seen," says Gregory OD Smith
President, URENCO USA.
Eventually, these fuel pellets are shipped off to nuclear plants to make electricity.