Far out Zog, Thats some detail. It looks very accurate from what...

Far out Zog, Thats some detail. It looks very accurate from what i recall.
The one thing I would add is that prior to Usec picking up the licence agreement with Silex in the 90s it would be fair to assume from information available in the 80s that they were all over various laser enrichment methods well before they chose Silex and Alvis out of a bunch of others.
(Alvis was eventually droped in favour of Silex after a kind of Doe lasers at 20 paces duel i think).
My point is, i think all these methods of enrichment had their chance during the last uranium bull run in the 90s when development dollars were there to be had. Silex and the American Centrifuge seem to be the ones that streaked ahead in that bunch, with Silex gaining valuable backing from Usec Ge-Hitachi and Cameco.
I believe whilst, yes Silex survived because of clever financial management, it was mostly that their technology was seen to be better at the time than their competitors that put them in good financial condition. As a result they are now miles ahead of the other laser methods.
Have a look at this document on some history of our competitors. It was written back when i had a mullet.



SOME ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF THE LOW ENRICHED URANIUM ... https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/21/080/21080493.pdf