Georges-Besse plant
French nuclear facility (1979–2012)
The Georges-Besse plant, known as the Eurodif plant from 1978 to 1988 (for European Gaseous Diffusion Uranium Enrichment Consortium), was a nuclear facility specializing in uranium enrichment by gaseous diffusion. The plant, now in the nuclear dismantling phase, is located on the Tricastin nuclear site at Pierrelatte in the Drôme region.
On the initiative of French President Georges Pompidou in late 1969, an agreement was signed between France, Belgium, Italy, and Spain in 1972 to give France complete autonomy over the nuclear fuel cycle. The plant was inaugurated in 1979 and operated for 33 years by Eurodif SA, a subsidiary of Areva NC. Along with Urenco, which operates based on an agreement between Germany, the UK, and the Netherlands, it was the only uranium enrichment plant operating based on a multinational agreement.
The Tricastin nuclear site comprises several nuclear facilities, the largest of which are the Tricastin nuclear power plant, the former Georges-Besse plant, and the new Georges-Besse II centrifuge enrichment plant. The centrifuge plant is getting expanded and should be completed by 2030.
The enriched uranium produced was used as fuel by French nuclear power plants and many foreign power plants. The enriched uranium produced by this plant supplied around 90 pressurized water reactors, the most widely used nuclear technology in the world, including the 58 French reactors. Eurodif SA's customers included EDF and over 30 electricity companies worldwide, and its main competitors were the United States and Russia.
History
Genesis of the project
On the strength of the experience acquired with the Pierrelatte military plant, and given the need for such an enrichment facility to develop an autonomous civilian nuclear program, President Georges Pompidou proposed at the end of 1969, in The Hague, that interested European countries join in feasibility studies for an international-scale enrichment plant.
The public source identifies “Georges-Besse plant” as french nuclear facility (1979–2012). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Georges-Besse, plant and French.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q54338531. Authority coordinates are 44.331, 4.722. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1978, 1988, 1969 and 1972.
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This entry incorporates text from “Georges-Besse plant” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.