Tennessee Will Be the Site for the New Uranium Plant

by Jennifer Hazen

September 2002

Tennessee Governor, Don Sundquist announced that Hartsville, Tennessee has been selected as the site to build the $1.1 billion uranium enrichment plant. The first in the United States in 50 years. The plant will be built by a partnership on nuclear companies from America, Canada, and Europe.

The consortium, Louisiana Energy Services, based in Washington, is made up of Urenco, a European enrichment company; Cameco, a Canadian uranium company; and three major nuclear power plant operators in this country: Exelon, Duke Energy and Entergy. The company that operates the only enrichment plant now running in this country, USEC, is also seeking to build a new plant.

Both planned enrichment plants would be similar in technology to the one that American intelligence experts say that Saddam Hussein is trying to build in Iraq. The American plants, however, would produce low-enriched uranium, suitable for power reactors but not bombs.