GLE completes landmark laser technology demonstration

Global Laser Enrichment (GLE) began the large-scale demonstration testing of the SILEX laser enrichment process in May. The extensive performance data it has collected provides confidence that the process can be commercially deployed, the company said. The demonstration programme will now continue through the rest of 2025, producing hundreds of kilograms of low-enriched uranium (LEU), while continuing towards building a domestic manufacturing base and supply chain to support deployment of US domestic enrichment capacity.

"We believe the enrichment activities conducted over the past five months position GLE to be the next American uranium enrichment solution," GLE CEO Stephen Long said, adding that, with 20% of US electricity supply coming from nuclear energy, this will "allow America to end its dangerous dependency on a fragile, foreign government-owned uranium fuel supply chain."

GLE is a joint venture of Australian company Silex Systems (51%) and Cameco Corporation (49%), and is the exclusive global licensee of the SILEX laser-based uranium enrichment technology invented by Silex Systems. Earlier this year, it completed the submission of an application to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the Paducah Laser Enrichment Facility (PLEF) in Kentucky, where it plans to deploy the technology commercially, re-enriching depleted uranium tails from legacy Department of Energy gaseous diffusion plant operations.

The project is underpinned by a long-term agreement signed in 2016 for the sale to GLE of some 200,000 tonnes from the US Department of Energy's depleted uranium hexafluoride inventory, from which PLEF is expected to produce up to 6 million separative work units of LEU annually, delivering a domestic, single-site solution for uranium, conversion and enrichment.