PARIS, Dec 11 (Reuters) - Areva plans to speed up its investment in uranium enrichment, Les Echos reported on Thursday, citing senior executives at the French nuclear group. The group has decided to bring forward by three years a plan to build a second uranium enrichment facility at its Tricastin site in France, the paper said, noting other nuclear projects have been thrown into doubt because of the financial crisis.
Work at the site will begin in the next few weeks, and be finished by the end of 2016, the paper said.
"We took the decision at the request of several long-standing and newer international clients, who are keen to secure their supplies of enriched uranium for several decades," Gerard Perrat and Nicolas de Turckheim, managing director and deputy managing director of the Areva subsidiary that will run the factoryds, were quoted as saying.