One of the things I found interesting in one of MG's answers was that Christo Liebenberg (MG didn't name him but the CEO of LIS Technologies) whilst he was a Silex employee from Jan 2006 to Dec 2011 missed the evolution of the current lasers and was only involved in their past laser systems which were abandoned in 2016/17. To me this is interesting in that the technology thought to be used in the period (see
HERE) during Christo's employment (2006 to 2011) was High Pressure CO
2 lasers then wavelength shifted to 15.916 μm with a raman shifter which was then multiplexed by a rotating mirror to form the excitation beam for diluted UF
6 in the separator. This is clearly complex but MG has now told us that this apparatus was scrapped in 2016/17 - so this leads to the question of what superseded it of which Christo was unaware of. We do know that the Beam Control system (BCS) was developed during this period but this is a control system and not laser - MG's response to today's question would indicate that something else was developed. The main argument put by the competition is assuming that the old apparatus (of HP CO2 lasers, raman shifters multiplexed by a rotating mirror is unwieldy and costly and on this the competition may have a case. An alternative (and much simpler) arrangement would be to use semi-conductor lasers (a device called a Quantum Cascade laser (QCC) can produce the required 15.916 μm wave length directly - without raman shifting) the problem is that QCC lasers have insufficient power. Welding machines have the same problem but for that application technology may have been developed to combine QCC laser beams to increase the power (individual QCC lasers would need to be synchronized - maybe this is one of the functions of the BCS?) Maybe I am clutching at hairs but MG's statement that much has changed since Christo's day leads me to speculate that they may have made this change - if so it should significantly simplify the apparatus.
The other intriguing response I got today was that whilst SLX got good (but secret) enrichment factors a primary factor was throughput (which is very true) - the implication I got was that whilst competitive laser isotope separation may boast that they have high enrichment factors (as does LIS technologies) , his implication was that they had low throughput. All around he felt that competition had to yet deal with regulators and security which he indicated was a challenge in many respects.
To me an interesting exchange - I may be drawing too much from it - just speculation
(20min delay)