The coming oversupply

摘要

Enrichment requirements for the world's growing fleet of nuclear power plants are expected to expand significantly. Current enrichment capacity on a world-wide basis is just sufficient to meet requirements, but the potential pace of enrichment capacity expansion is expected to out-strip the growth in requirements. Thus, it is not likely that all this expansion potential will come to fruition. The continuation of enrichment trade restrictions in the USA and European Union (EU) will have a major bearing on which projects go forward. Perhaps the biggest uncertainties are the status of USEC's American Centrifuge Project (ACP) and the feasibility of GE Hitachi-Global Laser Enrichment LLC's (GLE) laser-based SILEX process.