Treaty of Almelo
4 March 1970 - 4 March 2010
In the 1960s, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK all had R&D programmes underway for the gas centrifuge as a means of enriching uranium. In November 1968, Dutch, German and British ministers met in The Hague, and concluded that they should co-operate without delay in a project to build European centrifuge enrichment capacity. Collaboration on this basis would enable the development of a new and more efficient generation of centrifuge technology. The negotiations ran from 1968 – 1970, resulting in the Treaty of Almelo; this seminal Treaty outlined approaches to operations in the three countries, protection of technology and intellectual property rights, security and export processes and non-proliferation policy.
On 4 March 1970, the Treaty of Almelo was signed. This was ratified by the three parliaments in the summer of 1970 and the Treaty was then legally binding. This was the first historic landmark in the history of URENCO; the formal legal step towards the tripartite enrichment venture between the countries of UK, the Netherlands and Germany and the basis of the collaboration for the development and industrial exploitation of centrifuge technology to enrich uranium for civil use.
In 1971, three industrial partners: BNFL, Ultra-Centrifuge Nederland NV (UCN) and Uranit GmbH founded the jointly owned URENCO Ltd in Marlow, UK to market their enrichment services. URENCO signed its first large long-term contract in 1974 with GKN in the Netherlands, and the following decades marked growth and company development across the three European sites. URENCO restructured in 1993 to form one centrally operated and managed company.
In the late 1980s, URENCO began to study the idea of building a plant in the US.
The process began in 1990 with substantial support from many stakeholder groups enabling commencement of the LES project. LES submitted a license application for the plant in New Mexico in 2004, and the construction and operating license was received from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in 2006. The Groundbreaking ceremony for the site took place in August 2006. This too was a truly historic occasion, being the first nuclear facility to receive a licence to build and operate in the US for 30 years. URENCO’s fourth enrichment facility, URENCO USA, will commence operations in Spring 2010.
In July 1992 the German, Dutch, British and United States of America Governments signed the treaty of Washington, an agreement which was required in order to permit the establishment of URENCO’s fourth plant in New Mexico, US.
In July 2005, the German, Dutch, British and French Governments signed the Treaty of Cardiff, an agreement between the four Governments to supervise the collaboration between URENCO and Areva in their Joint Venture, ETC.
URENCO’s annual capacity at the end of 2009 stood at 12,200 tSW. Modular expansion of European plants, together with the operation of the US plant, is expected to achieve a capacity of 18,000 tSW/a by 2015.
Since the signing of this fundamental treaty, URENCO has fully justified the far-sighted decisions of 1970. During the last 40 years of development the URENCO Group has successfully grown its market share to 25% and is now a leading supplier in the extended global enrichment market. In doing so it has realised the original ambition to achieve nuclear non-proliferation and security of fuel supply on an international scale.