How lasers could help provide fuel for nuclear reactors

Outside the small town of Paducah, Kentucky, a wealth of uranium is locked away in thousands of storage cylinders filled with waste material from a now-closed nuclear enrichment facility. Lasers could help get it out.

A company called Global Laser Enrichment (GLE) is looking to reprocess this old material with a new technology called laser enrichment.

It could be more efficient than conventional enrichment methods, allowing the company to refresh the material and produce feedstock at the same concentration as a natural mined source.

And in the future, the company claims, laser enrichment could be used to make material for nuclear fuel, including the kind used in advanced reactors.

Nuclear power provides about 9% of global electricity today, and that fraction could tick up as major world powers like the US and China look to build new reactors, including some based on next-generation technology.

New, cheaper methods to obtain fuel could help ensure that those nuclear projects stay on track. Naturally occurring uranium is largely made up of uranium-238 (over 99%) and uranium-235 (about 0.7%).

Uranium-235 is the fissile type, meaning that, when hit with slow low-energy neutrons, it can

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  How lasers could help provide fuel for nuclear reactors