Environmental solutions provider Veolia on Thursday said it had completed the $350 million acquisition of nuclear waste cleanup technology developer Kurion.
The buyout is part of Veolia’s plan to carve out a chunk of a massive global nuclear remediation market, management said in February when it announced the deal. By 2020, the Paris-based multinational intends to produce $250 million in annual revenue from low-level radioactive waste treatment and roughly $150 million annually in nuclear technology decontamination, “with strong growth thereafter.”
The new acquisition will now be embedded with a number of nuclear-focused Veolia subsidiaries, including Asteralis, into a dedicated group led by Kurion CEO William Gallo.
“The acquisition positions Veolia as the industry global leader of optimized resource management with greater hazardous and nuclear waste clean-up solutions, and a stronger portfolio of clean technology that is second to none in the industry,” Gallo said in a statement to RadWaste Monitor. “This acquisition represents tremendous growth for both Veolia and Kurion as both companies will leverage parallel interests to scale the business and create technologies based on customer needs. Veolia and Kurion combine expertise and knowledge of hazardous waste restoration finding ways to improve operations and maximize potential for the hazardous and nuclear waste industry.”
Established in 2008, Irvine, Calif.-based Kurion now has more than 200 workers focused on developing technological solutions for nuclear waste remediation, facility decommissioning, and treatment of low-level radioactive waste. Its technologies include vitrification systems for stabilization and storage of nuclear waste; a method for removing the radioactive isotope tritium from contaminated water at nuclear plants; and over 180 robotic systems used in remediation projects around the world.
The company’s GeoMelt Vitrification system, obtained in a 2012 acquisition, has been used since the 1990s to solidify more than 26,000 metric tons of radioactive waste into a solid glass form in Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Kurion technologies have also been used in response to the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, including two mobile systems for removing strontium from 400,000 metric tons of water used to cool the plant’s reactors.
In announcing the deal earlier this year, Veolia laid out numbers it says illustrate the size of the global nuclear cleanup market in coming years. Up to 150 nuclear power reactors have closed or are due to close by 2030, and 50 nuclear research sites are also set for decommissioning, largely in France, the U.S., U.K., and former Soviet states, the company said.
The global nuclear dismantlement market from 2012 to 2030 is estimated to be worth $210 billion, encompassing cleanup and decommissioning, infrastructure, operations, and other segments, Veolia said. The company intends to emphasize the U.S., U.K., French, and Japanese markets, which it projects to be worth $118 billion over those 18 years, or $6.5 billion per year.
Veolia said its combination with Kurion will produce “the most comprehensive range of technologies for treating very low-level radioactive waste.” Kurion will provide its new owner with “innovative applied technologies” for its existing portfolio of waste management systems, Gallo said.
The focus will be on management of low-level, long-lived; low and intermediate-level, short-lived; and very low-level radioactive material, which the company says encompasses 96.8 percent of the material volume but only 0.1 percent of the radioactivity.
