A little-known Irvine company that played a key role in stabilizing a contaminated nuclear power plant in Japan after the earthquake and tsunami three years ago is hunting for more acquisitions to capitalize on a stream of new opportunities.
Kurion Inc. tripled its employee count in January to more than 100 with its acquisition of Richland, Wash.-based Vista Engineering Technologies. Ongoing work in Japan and growing demand in the U.S. and U.K. has the company scouring the globe to add support in a niche market with few established players.
The company’s contract with Tokyo Electric Power Co. to remove cesium from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant will last a decade, possibly longer, and it’s a big reason Kurion expects revenue to double annually in the coming years.
The Tepco contract is tens of millions of dollars, and by the end of 2016 Kurion will be generating annual revenue well into the nine figures, according to Chief Executive Bill Gallo.
He said revenue is expected to top $3 billion within 10 years.
“That’s going to require additional growth,” Gallo said. “We have our sights set on additional acquisition targets.”
Gallo, a 30-year industry veteran who held executive roles at French nuclear power giant Areva SA and the U.S. Department of Energy, was hired about a year ago to lead the company’s next phase. His first target is to grow the business to $1 billion in annual revenue.
“I’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said. “That’s what I’m focusing on.”
Big Assignment
Kurion workers sprang into action at the height of the nuclear crisis, just days after a 9.0 magnitude earthquake jolted Japan March 11, 2011, unleashing a tsunami more than 100 miles wide that washed away coastal towns and killed more than 15,000 people.
Thirty-five-foot waves struck the power plant, causing three of the four reactors in one unit to near meltdown.
Kurion, the only U.S. company with a direct contract with Tepco, was hired to build the first-ever external water-cooling system for a nuclear reactor.
The system had to process radioactive water in the turbine buildings and then recycle purified water back into the plant to cool the reactor. Kurion relied on its patent-pending mineral application that absorbs radioactive cesium. The sand-like material, known as “ion specific media,” (see graphic above) has low sensitivity to pH, saltwater and soap, and is resistant to radiation, according to Kurion.
The filtering system was delivered within five weeks of the disaster, assembled in three weeks, and tested for one day before activation.
“The response time was incredible,” Gallo said.
Areva, Hitachi-GE and Toshiba also created parts of the system to perform specific functions.
Kurion’s system removed 99.9% of the cesium within three months and 70% of radioactivity from the salt water in the first year. Other parts of the system removed the remaining 30%.
The company opened an office in Tokyo last month to support its ongoing role at Fukushima.
From NYC to OC
Kurion was founded in 2008 by John Raymont, former president of Nukem Corp. who built the unit of Germany-based Nukem GMBH into the second largest waste management company in the U.S. that deploys water treatment systems on-site.
The company was initially funded by New York venture capitalists at Lux Capital.
Raymont, now vice chairman and president of international operations, added senior executives who began developing and researching nuclear water stabilization and separation technologies.
Executives decided the West Coast was the best place to move the company from New York, based on the region’s strong engineering talent and ease of international travel. They settled on Irvine and opened headquarters here in late 2010. The company’s chief engineer, Richard Keenan, also lived in the area.
Kurion is also backed by Firelake Capital Management in Palo Alto and New York-based Acadia Woods Partners.
Kurion was established to solve key technical waste-management challenges impeding adoption and acceptance of nuclear power. The business targeted commercial markets but found early success stabilizing and removing waste from Cold War weapons sites in the U.S. and overseas.
It opened an office in Richland, Wash., about a year ago to handle one of the largest nuclear cleanup efforts in the world at Hanford, a 586-mile site established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project. The southeastern Washington site is home to five decades of nuclear weapons production that resulted in tens of millions of cubic yards of radioactive waste, contaminated soil and debris.
The Department of Energy spends about $2 billion a year at Hanford and $5.6 billion to $6 billion annually on nuclear waste cleanup and management, the agency told the Business Journal.
Kurion moved its testing facility to Richland in 2012 from Rolla, Mo. The system uses an induction process to transform waste into a glass-like material that can be securely stored.
That same year, it acquired the assets and licenses of Oak Ridge, Tenn.-based Impact Services Inc.’s GeoMelt business. The technology is a vitrification process designed to destroy hazardous organics and immobilize radioactive materials and heavy metals.
International regulators consider vitrification the “gold standard” for waste stabilization and isolation.
GeoMelt has been in commercial use in Japan since the 1990s to treat hazardous and toxic waste sites.
Kurion pitched the technology to Tepco officials to treat contaminated soil and debris at Fukusihima, but it has not been deployed there.
In January, Kurion launched a joint venture with the U.K.’s National Nuclear Laboratory to deploy a vitrification plant based on the company’s GeoMelt technology at its flagship lab at Sellafield, a nuclear reprocessing site built in 1942 to produce TNT. The U.K. government has designated the site as a possible location for a nuclear power station.
“We have great technologies. We have great access to marketplaces around the world,” Gallo said. “We didn’t have the bandwidth on all levels, and now we do.”
