Duke Energy, an American utility provider, and Areva, a French nuclear reactor manufacturer, are studying whether or not they can build a reactor in southern Ohio at a plant that was previously used for enriching uranium.

The plant would create 4,000 to 5,000 construction jobs and 500 to 700 permanent jobs, according to an article by The New York Times. If built, the reactor would be one of a series of plants planned by UniStar, a joint venture to build Areva plants, formed by Constellation Energy and Electricite de France.

The Portsmouth plant, located in Piketon, Ohio, was built by the Atomic Energy Commission and ran from 1954 to 2001. After that, the enrichment business was turned over from the federal government to a private company, the United States Enrichment Corporation.

USEC is now trying to develop a new kind of centrifuge to enrich uranium for use in nuclear power plants. However, it has had trouble finding financing, and is competing against well-established companies that already use centrifuges.

Officials in Ohio say they would like to see a “clean energy park” with a reactor and the enrichment plant. The previous enrichment process used so much electricity that the site has strong grid connections and cooling water available.

“We face the indisputable fact that our nation and our world are transitioning to a low-carbon future,” Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers said in the article. “Today, with the creation of this clean energy park demonstration project, the partners in this alliance, the State of Ohio and our country, are edging a little further across the bridge to that future.”

Industry officials say the plant would be hard to build without federal loan guarantees. In 2005, Congress authorized $18.5 billion in loan guarantees that would cover 80 percent of the building of reactors, but that number has now greatly diminished.