(Reuters) - Britain, Germany and the Netherlands have asked prospective buyers for their jointly-owned nuclear fuel enrichment firm Urenco to submit indicative bids by year-end, sources familiar with the process said.
The governments, which each own a third of Urenco, have agreed to test the market's appetite for the world's second-largest nuclear fuel vendor before deciding whether to kick-start a privatisation process that could fetch up to 10 billion euros ($13 billion), said the sources.
The UK Government’s plans to raise £3bn from the sale of uranium enrichment group Urenco may have hit a stumbling block after it emerged that the Dutch government is understood to have raised concerns about the sale of its stake.
The Dutch and UK governments each own a third of Urenco, one of the world’s biggest uranium enrichment companies, while Germany’s top two utilities, RWE and E.ON, own the rest.
HOLLAND has dropped its historic opposition to a sale of Urenco, clearing the way for a full privatisation of the state-backed nuclear fuel maker.
The sudden change of heart came after several rounds of intergovernmental talks over the future of Urenco, which is owned by the governments of Britain and Holland and two German utility companies.
LONDON (MarketWatch) -- Toshiba Corp. is weighing plans to bid for Urenco, the nuclear fuel producer backed by the U.K., the Netherlands and two German energy giants, the Sunday Times reports without citing sources.
The newspaper says the Japanese industrial giant, which owns the nuclear reactor builder Westinghouse Electric, wants to bid for the business if and when it comes on the market.
Urenco, which enriches uranium for nuclear fuel, is owned by the U.K. and Dutch governments and German firms RWE A.G. and E.ON S.E., who own a third each.
Britain has a stockpile of plutonium and uranium that, if converted to fuel, could be worth nearly £160 billion and power three nuclear reactors for 60 years, scientists say.
The future of the stockpile - largely left over from burning fuel - will be decided by ministers over the next year, The Times has learnt. Its value is estimated as the equivalent of 2.6 billion barrels of oil.
By Clive Cookson, Science Editor
A big study of nuclear workers has suggested an unexpectedly strong link between radiation exposure and heart disease.
The study, published yesterday, analysed health records and radiation doses for 65,000 people employed at four nuclear sites - Sellafield, Capenhurst and Springfields, in north-west England, and Chaplecross in south-west Scotland - between 1946 and 2005.
London Evening Standard, 4 December 2007
The organs of miscarried and stillborn babies may have been harvested for testing by nuclear scientists, it emerged yesterday.
Victims of road accidents could also have been part of the grisly programme set up to establish whether workers at Sellafield had suffered radiation poisoning.
Date of release: 24/09/2007
The European Investment Bank has signed a EUR 200 million loan with Urenco Ltd for the expansion of two uranium enrichment plants based in the UK and the Netherlands. This project forms part of the company’s medium-term investment programme, meeting global uranium enrichment demand by the use of Urenco’s world-leading energy-efficient technology.
