U comme Uranium, 1ère Partie, De la Mine à la Centrale.

Concentrates on light–water reactors, indicative of the shift of strategy at EdF away from the UNGG type (which never performed as well as the similar British MAGNOX plants). The Franco–Belgian PWR at Tihange is shown.

Emphasizes that conventional and nuclear fuels differ in the degree of preparation required before use. Coal is burned essentially in the form it comes out of the ground, oil may be subjected to a simple refining process, but uranium must pass through a complex series of stages before being loaded into the reactor. Mining, milling, refining, fluorination, enrichment, and fabrication of fuel assemblies are covered.

Various facilities are shown, including quite extensive coverage of the French commercial gaseous diffusion enrichment plant, EURODIF, under construction. Extensive animations illustrate the function of an enrichment cascade.

Produced by Les Films Saturn for the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique and Electricité de France.

The cost of this film–to–video transfer (not counting the price I paid for the film itself) was US$217.