ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 5, 2002 (PRIMEZONE) -- Commodore Applied Technologies, Inc. (AMEX:CXI) (CXI.WS) ("Commodore") today announced that it has recently signed two new contracts for the utilization of the SET technology.
Commodore Advanced Sciences (CASI), a wholly owned subsidiary of CXI, has received a contract from American Ecology Recycle Center, Inc. (AERC), which calls for CASI to treat 20,500 lbs. of mixed radioactive and hazardous solvent wastes at AERC's facilities in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The treatment will be done by the SL-2 SET system. The wastes were generated as distillation residues during the recovery of Freon used to clean radioactively contaminated tools, equipment and other metallic materials. The SET technology converts the Freon 113 into unregulated organic and inorganic by-products. The SET technology has been patented and demonstrated to destroy most classes of Freons, Halons and HCFCs of which there are an estimated several hundred thousand metric tons to be treated and/or destroyed globally.
Commodore Advanced Sciences, Inc., has received a contract from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) for the destruction of 12,000 lbs. of low-level contaminated sodium. Liquid sodium has been used over the years as a coolant and/or shielding material in many nuclear reactors. When these reactors are decommissioned, handling and treatment of the sodium inventories becomes an issue. Sodium is highly chemically reactive and may contain trace amounts of radioactive material. Commodore's SET process may be used to treat bulk sodium, converting it to inactive sodium chloride (NaCl). Trace amounts of radioactive material, such as Na22, is also converted to a salt in the SET process, and the residue can then be land disposed as low-level radioactive waste.
In the U.S., there are in excess of one million kilograms of stored sodium to be treated and two sodium-cooled reactors to be decommissioned and dismantled. Additionally, there are millions of kilograms of sodium associated with the fast breeder reactor programs in France, the U.K., Japan and the former Soviet Union, and seven reactors to be decommissioned and dismantled.
Commodore Chairman and CEO, Shelby Brewer, stated, "I am pleased with these contracts. The Freon project will place us in the Oak Ridge community, where so much of the DOE mixed waste inventory is managed, and serves as still another demonstration of the efficacy and economics of our SET technology. The LANL sodium contract will display SET's capability for stabilizing radioactive sodium. There is quite a lot of sodium, worldwide, from various fast breeder reactor projects, to be treated."
The Company will hold its annual meeting for the years 2000 and 2001 on or about May 2002. All shareholders of record will be notified in the standard manner.
Commodore Applied Technologies, Inc. is a diverse technical and financial solutions company focused on high-end environmental markets. The Commodore family of companies includes subsidiaries Commodore Solution Technologies, Commodore Advanced Sciences and Dispute Resolution Management. The Commodore companies provide negotiated financial solutions, technical engineering services and patented remediation technologies designed to treat hazardous waste from nuclear and chemical sources. More information is available on the Commodore Web site at www.commodore.com and on the DRM Web site at www.drmworld.com.
Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause Commodore's actual results to be materially different from any future results expressed or implied by these statements. This press release contains forward-looking statements that are based on our current expectations, beliefs, and assumptions about the industry and markets in which Commodore Applied Technologies, Inc. and its subsidiaries operate. Actual results may differ materially from what is expressed herein and no assurance can be given that the Company can successfully implement its core business strategy and improve future earnings.
Such factors include the following: the Company's current need for additional cash to sustain existing operations and meet ongoing capital requirements; the Company's dependence on its subsidiary, Dispute Resolution Management, to meet its cash needs; the Company's ability to implement its commercial waste processing operations, including obtaining commercial waste processing contracts and processing waste under such contracts in a timely and cost-effective manner; the timing and award of contracts by the U.S. Department of Energy for the cleanup of waste sites administered by it; the Company's ability to integrate acquired companies; the acceptance and implementation of the Company's waste treatment technologies in the government and commercial sectors; and other large technical support services projects. All forward-looking statements are also expressly qualified in their entirety by the cautionary statements included in the Company's SEC filings, including its quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and its annual report on Form 10-K.