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Paris-based Areva – to build a centrifuge enrichment plant
in southern Idaho. A domestic competitor is General Electric
(Fairfield, Connecticut), now working on a laser-based
enrichment system at its Wilmington, North Carolina, plant.
World Nuclear News
reported (10
th
June) that the Noble Group
recently acquired a 5.13% stake in USEC for $30.2 million.
The Hong Kong-based global supply chain manager is new
to the nuclear field.
Automotive
Onetime partners Toyota and General
Motors both give strong indications of a
rapidly improving US auto market
Taking a vigorously proactive approach to repairing its fortunes
in North America, Toyota Motor Corp on 17
th
June announced
that it would resume construction of a plant in Mississippi, put
on hold 18 months before. The Japanese auto maker said its
$1.3 billion plant in Blue Spring, 90 miles southeast of Memphis,
is scheduled to start up in the fall of 2011. Delivering the good
news all at once, Toyota said the plant would create 2,000 jobs,
precisely the number in its original estimate.
Construction at Blue Spring was 90% complete in December
2008 when Toyota halted the project in response to plunging
sales of its vehicles in the North American market. Most of the
remaining work reportedly involves equipment installation.
“Now it’s time to fulfill Toyota’s promise in Mississippi,” Yoshimi
Inaba, the president and chief operating officer of Toyota Motor
North America, said in a statement. “Toyota remains committed
to making vehicles where we sell them and to maintaining a
substantial manufacturing presence in North America.”
Production plans for Blue Spring have been adjusted yet again.
The plant was initially intended to produce sport utility vehicles.
Then, in mid-2008, as surging gas prices were generating
demand for fuel-efficient vehicles, Toyota said it would build
Prius hybrid cars there. (This was not to be; and Toyota on
17
th
June did not address whether it would eventually build the
Prius, now imported from Japan, in North America.)
The latest candidate is the Corolla, the popular compact now in
its tenth generation. Toyota might do well to let this one make
it to the finish line in Mississippi. According to the auto buying
guide Edmunds.com, the Corolla is “the quintessential economy
car” and the best-selling nameplate in automotive history.
Toyota said the opening of the Blue Spring plant would mean
that nearly all Corollas sold in North America will be built in the
US and Canada.