Ann: Operational Update - 21 February 2025, page-24

Clearly with GLE not being true "stars and stripes" they will be at a disadvantage to a true US company such as BWXT. However given that GLE operates wholly in the USA (apart from current laser builds at Lucas Heights but no doubt moving to Wilmington) this disadvantage is minimized. The competition (Orano, Urenco) are overseas government corporations (Orano - French currently has no US presence but Urenco (German, UK, Dutch) has a plant in Eunice, NM) are IMO in a worse position (overseas/government ownership are bigger political disadvantages than private sector ownership from a Republican stanpoint). Even now Centrus does not own the HALEU cascade at Piketon (it's owned by DoE) and operates the DoE owned cascade (16 centrifuges) on a cost plus basis (the HALEU product is owned by the DoE) and requires 4.8% LEU as feedstock. I discount ASP Isotopes (South Africa) since they have no US presence and their technology (AVLIS) has been debunked in the Fuzzy Panda report (see HERE). This leaves LIS Technology and General Matters.

LIS Technology has a US patent for laser enrichment (with a 5.3 micron laser) but this was rejected by Cameco in 1993 and stored in Cali, majoornia and now being re-assembled (as a test loop) in Oak Ridge, TN - they estimate their maturity as TRL/4 but from what I can assess that's pretty optimistic and they are at about where we were in 2006. Their patent was granted in 2014 after Oak Ridge Lab assessed that it was not worth classifying (IMO that probably represented an Oak Ridge bias to centrifuge tech rather than towards Silex - we had the same issue in 2003 when Oak Ridge pressured USEC to drop Silex. IMO the LIS Technology has some advantages over us in that the lasers are simpler but IMO have a massive problem in that UF6 at 5.3 micro. All I can see is that their supporters is virtually transparent to 5.3 micron light (they say 5,000 to 10,000 times less absorption) but you also have to remember that 5.3 micron light has 3 times the energy of 16 microns (our frequency). They will however need enormious path lengths and IMO it will be very difficult to preserve the "fluence" (shape) of the beam over the large required path length (using end mirrors. The fact though is that it's immature and it's founder (Jeff Eerkins) is 93 years old and the CEO (Christo Leibenberg) worked for GLE up to Dec 2011 and will have to be careful not to violate SLX top secret copyright (he could end up im jai; if he does). LIST have indicated that they may soon be classified as well as GLE - they are no where in the NRC approvals, major (investment grade) partners or tails feed stock sourcing (like our DoE deal)

The unknown is General Matter who I assumed was BWXT (but I don't know) but I understand that they have an ex Space X CEO (in San Francisco - so the dark horse could be Elon Musk. They evidently are proposing a plant in Richland Washington State (see HERE) and from the name I would assume it's centrifuge technology but that could be to deliberately miss lead people - they clearly do not like publicity). It would appear that their reported plant cost of US$4Bn is well out of line with Orano's quoted cost of US$10Bn (in Oak Ridge). MG has said that the PLEF will be about 50% of Centrifuge capex.(I don't know if that's 50% of US$4Bn or US$10Bn but the original estimate (~2018/19) was US$1Bn so I hope it's 50% of US$4Bn, The fact is that to raise this amount of Capex will require US government guarantees and an investment grade prime owner Ii.e Cameco/ Orano, Urenco or BWXT). IMO it's unlikely that LIS Tech or ASP Isotopes could raise the capex so they would need an investment grade partner to build a plant but in terms of maturity they are both unlikely to make the grade in the foreseeable future (IMO ASP Isotopes are not credible from a technical and location (South Africa) stand point in any case).

In conclusion I feel that our real competitor is Centrus and that we will both be supported (they due to being mature technolgoy and true stars and stripes) and GLE for technology diversity - Orano, Urenco and BWXT may also get some US government encouragement - Elon Musk could be a dark horse.