Veolia, a major player in ecological innovation

Veolia is a major player in ecological innovation. We’ll be looking at its involvement in nuclear waste management,

(this article will evolve over time, as Veolia is a very large company that we will no doubt be mentioning regularly on this site)

A short history of Veolia (in brief)

Veolia’s history goes back to the 18th century, with the Compagnie des Eaux de Paris. The Compagnie Générale des Eaux was born a little later, on December 14, 1853. The company diversified considerably from the 1980s onwards, taking over Compagnie Générale d’Entreprises Automobiles in 1989, and investing in the media, notably by participating in the creation of Canal in 1983 and Cegetel in 1996…

In May 1998, it became Vivendi, with two divisions: a communications division and an environmental division. It’s the latter that interests us here. In 2003, it was renamed Veolia Environnement. There are now several divisions: water, waste management, energy services and transportation. The latter (transport) was sold in 2013 and became Transdev. In 2014, Veolia Environnement officially became Veolia.

Activities of interest

We’ve seen Veolia play an important role in a number of areas. It presents itself globally as a “global reference in optimized resource management”. In particular, it is active in

• water treatment
• through its expertise in robotics

Water treatment

Veolia had notably been called in urgently by Tepco to decontaminate the water used to cool the Fukushima reactors following the disaster, in 2011.

In May 2016, Veolia reportedly set up the world’s largest reprocessing plant in Hong Kong.

Water treatment can be a source of methane. In February 2022, Veolia and TotalEnergies signed an agreement to develop biomethane from Veolia’s waste and wastewater treatment centers

Robotics expertise

Veolia also supplied a robot to Tepco in 2014, to inspect Fukushima’s Reactor 2 and survey the damage caused by the disaster.

Creation of subsidiaries and acquisitions

Remediation of irradiated equipment

One of Veolia’s activities is the remediation of irradiated equipment. The group has several companies operating in this sector, most notably Kurium and Asteralis.

Asteralis is Veolia’s subsidiary specializing in the nuclear sector.

Kurion was originally an American company specializing in low-level radioactive waste remediation techniques. Its work is said to have helped stabilize the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. It was acquired by Veolia for $350 million in February 2016. It was renamed Veolia Nuclear Solutions (VNS).

Here is the organizational chart presented by Veolia:

New projects

Veolia has launched major Greentech projects.

In the nuclear field, through its subsidiary Asterialis, Veolia has founded :

• Graphitech, with EDF (Cyclife), to dismantle graphite power plants.
• Waste2glass, with EDF (Cyclife), to develop and market Geomelt, a waste vitrification process.

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