Bob Hoffman,
President, Framatome Cogema Fuels
Addressing Tokaimura

The September 30 criticality accident in Japan was a surprise. As you are aware, in the United States we have significant safeguards in place to prevent this kind of accident. Our Lynchburg Manufacturing Facility (LMF) does not process high enriched uranium, or handle such material in liquid or powdered form; we receive only processed UO2 pellets.

Regardless of the U.S. safeguards and our own safeguards, we are using the Japan accident to reemphasize our safety efforts. The staff at LMF has initiated a self-assessment of our nuclear criticality safety program. NRC regulations require a minimum of two independent defenses against accidental criticality, and we meet or exceed those defenses.

We are participating with the Nuclear Energy Institute in an industry review group to apply lessons learned from the Japan accident. In addition to the fuel fabricators, the industry review group also includes the U.S. Enrichment Corporation, the sole uranium enrichment company in America. The review group will be touring LMF and other fabrication sites.

You’ll see a couple of items in this EnVision in which we take pride in our accomplishments. FCF recently received ISO-9001 certification, which took a lot of work on the parts of many people, and sets a new series of quality standards which we met and must continue to meet in order to maintain certification.

In addition, we have completed development of and submitted a topical report on the M5 Alloy for fuel assemblies, the next advance in fuel assembly materials technology. This fuel cladding material will allow us to enter the new millennium with the most advanced fuel cladding material in the industry.