Areva NC
| Public | |
| Industry | Nuclear |
| Founded | 1976 |
| Headquarters | Paris, France |
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Area served
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France |
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Key people
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| Website | Areva |
Areva NC, formerly COGEMA (Compagnie générale des matières nucléaires) is a French company, created in 1976 from the production division of the French government's CEA (English: Atomic Energy Commission.) It is an industrial group active in all stages of the uranium fuel cycle, including uranium mining, conversion, enrichment, spent fuel reprocessing, and recycling. In 2001, COGEMA was merged with Framatome and CEA Industrie to form the larger group Areva; the subsidiary's name was changed to Areva NC in March 2006.
Areva NC is based in France and with its subsidiaries has a presence in more than 30 countries. It employs approximately 19,000 people worldwide, with controlling shares still held by the French government.
The COGEMA La Hague site, located on the western tip of the Cotentin Peninsula in Normandy, reprocesses spent power reactor fuel to recycle reusable energy materials-uranium and plutonium - and to condition the waste into suitable final form.
Areva NC has uranium reserves in Niger, Canada, Australia and Kazakhstan. The last mine operation in France, La Société des Mines de Jouac, closed in 2001 when its reserves ran out. Now the company operates uranium mines only in Niger and Canada. It also conducts exploration, primarily in Canada, Niger and central Asia, to replenish its reserves.
Areva NC's Niger operations consist of three concessions near the town of Arlit, runs as joint ventures with (minority) stakeholders from the Nigerian government and smaller foreign investors. Arlit was in fact built in the midst of the Sahara to support these operations, and has a large expatriate population employed by Areva and its subcontractors. These ventures are Somair (Société des Mines de l'Aïr) which operates an open pit uranium mine, and COMINAK (Compagnie Minière d'Akouta). These two mines accounted for 3,093 metric tonnes of uranium in 2005, almost 10 percent of annual global production and 30% of French consumption and 32% of Niger's exports, but less than 5% of Niger's GDP. The increase in the cost of uranium on world markets in 2006 (more than 46% ) will enable Niger to triple its revenues sourced from Areva.
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