Test Loop and Florence, page-13

I think one thing that you miss is that the Silex process is not just a laser process. It is both excitment of the UF6 and a separator. in the context of the excitment process SLX use the fundamental 16 micron laser frequency which is generated bot from a CO2 laser and then raman shift - this is an inefficient process but the impact on the UF6 is much more effective than using the harmonics (as in CRISLA). To get the power required for the Silex process several CO2 lasers must be multiplexed using a reflection mechanism - this is expensive but since the 16 micron frequency is so much more resonant than the harmonics possibly still more effective at exciting the UF6.
Possibly the jewel is not the laser excitement mechanism but the separator which has been much more confidential than the excitment mechanism. In this contect I speculate that the background of MG andhis associated has significance. Their background is the South African enrichment echnology which was used to enrich uranium for their 6 weapons (which they declared after the ending of apartheid and the current regime). This was the HeliKon vortex process which I would hazard a guess is the real secret behind Silex process and is the basis for the level of separation claimed by MG as being between 2 and 20. Clearly the separator used by Silex will be a more developed than the initial SA process but the effective mass difference between U235F6 and U238F6 is that after excitement the U235F6 is monomer (i.e a single molecule) but the U238F6 and the U238F6 bound to the carrier gas is a dimer (a double molecule) and this effective mass difference can potentially be used to provide a high separation factor (as intimated by MG) (i.e the mass difference is vastly exaggerated due to the U235F6 being a monomer rather than the U28F6 being still a dimer (paired molecules) either with another U238F6 molecule or more likely with the carrier gas (also heavy molecule/atom such as SF6 or Xe).

If I am right (and that is pure speculation) then the real IP is the separator not the laser process but it would seem that SLX still have claim to using the 16 micron fundamental for excitement of the U235F6 which makes the separation much more effective. Maybe using Quantum Cascade lasers would be a better (and cheaper) method of generating the 16 micron infrared beam but with what I know of current technology getting the required power would be difficult without some amplification method to provide the necessary power.