morning flurry, page-3

and more from that site


The only remaining laser process on the world stage is SILEX, an Australian development which is molecular and utilises UF6. In 1996 USEC secured the rights to evaluate and develop SILEX for uranium (it is also useable for silicon and other elements) but relinquished these in 2003.

In 2006 GE Energy entered a partnership to develop the SILEX process. It provided for GE (now GE-Hitachi) to construct in the USA an engineering-scale test loop, then a pilot plant or lead cascade, which could be operating in 2012, and expanded to a full commercial plant. Apart from US$ 20 million upfront and subsequent payments, the license agreement will yield 7-12% royalties, the precise amount depending on how low the cost of deploying the commercial technology. GE referred to SILEX, which it has rebadged as Global Laser Enrichment (GLE), as "game-changing technology" with a "very high likelihood" of success. GE-Hitachi plans to complete the test loop program in 2010. The initial phase of this to April 2010 was successful in meeting performance criteria, so that engineering design for a commercial facility has commenced. GLE anticipates gleaning sufficient data from the test loop by the end of 2010 to decide whether to proceed with a full-scale commercial enrichment facility. In mid 2008 Cameco bought into the GLE project, paying $124 million for 24% share, alongside GE (51%) and Hitachi (25%).

In October 2007 the two largest US nuclear utilities, Exelon and Entergy, signed letters of intent to contract for uranium enrichment services from GLE. The utilities may also provide GLE with facility licensing and public acceptance support if needed for development of a commercial-scale GLE plant. GEH is operating the GLE test loop at Global Nuclear Fuel's Wilmington, North Carolina fuel fabrication facility - GNF is a partnership of GE, Toshiba, and Hitachi. In mid 2009 GEH submitted the last part of its licence application for this GLE plant, which will take the NRC 30 months to process, to December 2011. If the decision is made to proceed with construction (from early 2012), the GLE commercial production facility at Wilmington, North Carolina would have an annual capacity of 3.5 to 6 million separative work units (SWU).

Applications to silicon and zirconium are also being developed by Silex Systems near Sydney.