Expansion by the introduction of new technology in a market characterized by overcapacity—the success of Urenco centrifuge technology Original Research Article

Urenco has successfully developed and deployed centrifuge technology for the enrichment of uranium in a period during which the market changed from a situation of ‘threatened undersupply’ in the 1970s to one of significant overcapacity. Five generations of centrifuges have been developed, introducing new materials as they became available. The sixth generation of centrifuge currently under development for deployment at the end of the century will be more than twice as fast and an order of magnitude longer than respectively the slowest and shortest pilot plant centrifuges, with an output approaching 50 times higher than that in the pilot plant. Plant operation has exceeded both design lifetimes and failure rates. Urenco has concluded that the economics of this sixth-generation centrifuge are better than any forseeable first generation AVLIS technology and thus, in Urencoʹs view the centrifuge represents the low risk, proven economic choice for the replacement of GDPs when this becomes necessary.