Uranium mining in the United States is undergoing a revival. In the wake of the recent ban on Russian uranium imports, the domestic nuclear industry is quickly coming back to life. The resurgence of uranium mining is a strong start, but it begs the question: What happens after we dig it up? LIS Technologies might have the answer.
Uranium is a critical raw material for manufacturing nuclear fuel. Before it can power nuclear power plants and portable reactors, however, it must undergo processing.
One specific uranium isotope, known as U-235, is fissile and an essential isotope for nuclear fuel. In its natural state, uranium is only about 0.71% U-235. To be useful, uranium must be “enriched,” meaning the concentration of U-235 must be increased.
The level of enrichment required depends on the type of fuel needed. Nuclear power plants and many older reactors run on low-enriched uranium (LEU), which is up to 5% U-235. Most newer, advanced reactors depend on high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), which is up to 20% U-235. Because of the increased demand for LEU for civilian nuclear power plants, and the high demand for HALEU to fuel advanced reactors for AI data centers and other applications, enriched uranium in different forms is in high demand.
Because the U-235 isotope is structurally very similar to other uranium isotopes, isolating it and increasing its concentration isn’t easy. Uranium enrichment requires a massive amount of time, space, and resources. In the race to restore the country’s nuclear pipeline, the bottleneck isn’t the acquisition of raw uranium — it’s uranium enrichment.
After the passage of the Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act, the U.S. found itself in short supply and in desperate need of enriched uranium. While the technology for large-scale uranium mining already exists, the same can’t be said for enriching uranium at scale. The US currently has only one operating uranium enrichment plant, owned by a European consortium. However, this facility produces only one third of the annual US demand for nuclear fuel; the rest has to be imported. There is an urgent need for the US to become energy independent, because energy security is also national security.
The Department of Energy has awarded contracts to a handful of companies, including LIS Technologies, to work toward the creation of that technology.
“The U.S. banned Russian imports, which controlled the market. Now with this deficiency, there’s a bottleneck, and the U.S. doesn’t know where to get HALEU, and none of these SMR [small modular reactor] companies or micro reactors know where they’re going to get their fuel,” says Jay Yu, President of LIS Technologies. “So we’re building all these billion-dollar reactors, but we don’t even have the fuel for them.”
Enriching enough uranium to power the country’s growing fleet of reactors isn’t a simple proposition. Many companies rely on centrifuges, which often must go through hundreds of stages before reaching the requisite concentration of U-235.
Enter the next generation of uranium enrichment: lasers. “Laser can be more selective, more elegant,” says LIS Technologies co-founder and CEO Christo Liebenberg. “It’s more precise, it’s much cheaper, it’s a much smaller footprint. Lasers have always been seen as the holy grail of enrichment.”
As a laser scientist, Liebenberg has spent much of his life improving the process of laser enrichment. Jeff Eerkens, the company’s other co-founder, is considered the Father of Laser Enrichment. In the 1980s and 90s, he developed the CRISLA (Condensation Repression Isotope Selective Laser Activation) process of laser enrichment.
So why hasn’t laser enrichment already been implemented nationwide? The process itself is highly efficient, but as of now, it’s proven to be unscalable.
“Laser enrichment has been around for 50 years, and no one has been able to successfully scale it, to take it to commercialization. Not one out of 20-plus countries,” says Liebenberg. But that may soon change. LIS Technologies is in the process of creating a laser that makes it possible to enrich uranium on a larger scale.
“Our lasers are very different from what we’ve been using in the past,” Liebenberg says. “I’ve given up on the prior art. We’re going to use this new type of laser that’s much more scalable. We’re going to scale the whole process and show that we can still do LEU in a single-stage, and HALEU in a double-stage with scaled equipment.”
Given the fact that most large-scale enrichment processes must go through hundreds of stages, this might sound too good to be true. “If you irradiate the uranium once, it’s enriched all the way from natural to the LEU level,” Liebenberg explains. “If you irradiate it again, you can go all the way to HALEU, up to 20%.”
Why does this matter? As the U.S. moves toward energy independence, having a steady supply of nuclear fuel is non-negotiable. Current enrichment technologies are so time-consuming that they’ll likely cause a backup in the domestic fuel pipeline.
If LIS Technologies can demonstrate its single-stage enrichment process at scale, it could revolutionize America’s nuclear industry. When mined uranium can be enriched and put to use without delay, the nation will be well on its way to a new era of clean energy.
