ANDRA renews its confidence in AREVA as industrial operator of the Aube radioactive waste storage center in France

PARIS, FRANCE, APRIL 26, 2012 – AREVA secured the renewal of its operating contract with Andra (the French National Radioactive Waste Management Agency) for its Aube low and intermediate level waste storage center in Eastern France. Set for a minimum of three years, the contract could be extended until 2017.

AREVA has been for the past 20 years the industrial operator of this Andra storage center which houses radioactive waste mainly coming from the maintenance, the operation and the dismantling of nuclear installations.

AREVA’s mission includes the processing, the conditioning and the storage of the waste. In 2011, near to 22,000 packages were delivered to the storage center, more than 13,000 packages were compacted and 11,000 stored on site by AREVA’s teams.

Out of the five bidding companies, Andra emphasized the competitiveness of the AREVA offer, through its subsidiary STMI, and awarded the group with the highest technical score.

Alain Vandercruyssen, Executive Vice President of AREVA’s Cleanup Business Unit, praised the decisive involvement of AREVA’s teams in winning this contract. “This success is partly due to the creative process implemented by AREVA’s teams to prepare the bid using the EFICA* method. This method allowed us to present to ANDRA a competitive and attractive offer based on an innovative organization”.

With this contract renewal, AREVA’s expertise on the back-end of the nuclear cycle as well as its industrial operator status is once again recognized. With more than 40 years of experience, AREVA is the leader of the clean-up market in France and one of the sector’s major players worldwide.

* The EFICA method is inspired by an approach that uses creativity to solve problems in a step-by-step process:
1. Explore: exploring the problem and grasping its various aspects,
2. Formalize: setting out the identified issues in a structured manner,
3. Ideas: exploring ideas,
4. Construction: building and prioritizing solutions,
5. Action: planning the actions to be carried out.