As GE Hitachi (GEH) Nuclear Energy awaits US Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing of a first-of-a-kind commercial uranium enrichment technology, the American Physical Society (APS) is awaiting an NRC decision on a year-and-a-half-old petition to require the commission to explicitly weigh the proliferation risk raised by the new laser isotope-separation process. The commission is expected to rule on the license application this month, with a decision on the APS petition to follow in October.
Submitted in November 2010, the petition argues that the separation of isotopes by laser excitation (SILEX) technology that GEH hopes to use in manufacturing nuclear fuel for commercial reactors could heighten the global risk of a nation clandestinely acquiring nuclear weapons capability. It reasons that the greater efficiency of the SILEX process makes it likely that enrichment facilities will be smaller and therefore more easily concealed than today’s gas-centrifuge enrichment facilities. For nuclear fuel, the fissionable uranium-235...
