Branded Content by Cosmic Press

Many people don’t realize that “clean” energy isn’t always as clean as it sounds. Nuclear energy has long been considered a viable alternative to fossil fuels, but uranium enrichment, an essential part of producing nuclear fuel, has a significant, adverse environmental impact. LIS Technologies is changing that.

Currently, the dominant process of uranium enrichment is the gas centrifuge technique. Uranium is converted to a gas and placed in a centrifuge, where the centrifugal force separates isotopes by mass difference. U-235 isotopes (the isotopes needed to create nuclear fuel) are lighter, so they concentrate at the center.

However, creating nuclear fuel isn’t quite that simple. To achieve the necessary concentration of U-235, the uranium must be fed through a “cascade” of multiple centrifuges due to the minuscule difference in the properties of the two isotopes. This process consumes a massive amount of electricity, as well as a considerable amount of space.

Gas centrifuge enrichment eats up a lot of time and electricity. Laser enrichment offers an economical alternative with much less environmental impact, reducing the energy needs by a factor of 5-10. The process uses lasers to separate uranium isotopes and ultimately create enriched uranium.

LIS Technologies is a company focused on laser enrichment, utilizing industrial lasers to drive the enrichment process. Its leaders have pioneered an ultra-efficient laser enrichment process that drastically improves the energy use and environmental impact of uranium enrichment.

“Lasers can be more selective, more elegant,” says Christo Liebenberg, co-founder and President of LIS Technologies. “Laser Isotope Separation is a more targeted and precise method of enriching uranium, which leads to the production of fewer byproducts and reduces the amount of waste generated during enrichment. Moreover, by producing higher-assay fuel, LIS could extend the lifespan of nuclear reactors and reduce the frequency of fuel replacement, minimizing the overall environmental impact of nuclear power. Cleaner and more efficient nuclear energy can help ensure a stable, low-carbon energy supply.”

Laser enrichment’s smaller environmental footprint is largely due to its precision. Instead of using large cascades of centrifuges to concentrate U-235 isotopes, LIS Technologies uses a specialized laser to selectively excite and separate uranium isotopes. From there, the separated U-235 isotopes can be harvested.

Compared to the centrifuge method, laser enrichment takes far less time and electricity. Depending on the type of fuel needed, it only takes one or two stages.

“We can do single-stage LEU [low-enriched uranium] and double-stage HALEU [high-assay low-enriched uranium],” says Liebenberg. “You irradiate the uranium once, and it’s enriched from natural all the way to the LEU level. If you irradiate it again, you can go all the way to HALEU.”

Given its clear advantages over centrifuge technology, you might wonder why laser enrichment hasn’t been widely implemented. It’s not for lack of trying.

“In the laser space, there’s not much competition,” Liebenberg explains. “Laser enrichment has been seen as the holy grail of enrichment for 50 years. It’s been tried by more than 20 different countries, and no one has been able to scale it.”

If LIS Technologies’ process is implemented on a large scale, it could usher in a new era of safe, clean, sustainable energy.

“There are all these reasons that there is a huge resurrection of nuclear power,” says Liebenberg. “We are literally in the middle of a second nuclear age.”