LIS Technologies’ Laser Leap: Tackling the 99% Concentration Threat in Nuclear Fuel Supply

As demand for power and concern for the environment continue to grow in almost equal measure, the world has turned its collective attention toward alternative energy sources. Now, once-maligned nuclear power is being hailed as a potential solution, and LIS Technologies is here to fuel it.

Nuclear power delivers clean energy, and it’s also efficient enough to accommodate the massive power needs of proliferating AI data centers. It might be promising, but no energy solution is perfect. Before touting nuclear as the next great hope, countries should take a close look at a very real potential threat: concentration risk.

Enriched uranium is essential for fueling nuclear reactors. And although countries all over the world are embracing the nuclear revival, more than 99% of uranium enrichment capacity is concentrated in just four countries. Russia alone controls 40%.

Energy independence is critical, and U.S. policy is changing to reflect that. In 2024, the Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act was passed in an effort to lessen the U.S. nuclear industry’s reliance on foreign enriched uranium.

“The U.S. banned Russian imports, which controlled the market,” says Jay Yu, CEO of LIS Technologies. “Now there's a bottleneck, and the U.S. doesn't know where to get HALEU [high-assay low-enriched uranium], and none of these companies or micro reactors know where they're going to get their fuel.”

“We have the future answer to this,” he continues. “We have their future fuel.”

That’s not hyperbole or wishful thinking. LIS Technologies has solved a problem that’s perplexed nuclear scientists for decades.

Currently, many uranium enrichment facilities use the gas centrifuge method, in which spinning centrifuges separate uranium isotopes by mass. Although this is an improvement on older methods, it’s far less efficient than laser enrichment.

The problem? No one has been able to scale the laser enrichment process, at least until now.

“Laser enrichment has been around for 50 years, and no one has been able to successfully scale it, to take it to commercialization,” says Christo Liebenberg, co-founder and President of LIS Technologies. “Not one out of 20-plus countries.”

It’s taken years of innovation and trial and error, but Liebenberg and his team have finally developed the technology needed for large-scale laser enrichment.

“Our lasers are very different from what we've been using in the past,” he 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.”

The LIS Technologies brand of laser enrichment isn’t just scalable — it’s also extremely efficient.

Gas centrifuge enrichment often involves 10 to 20 steps to create low-enriched uranium (LEU), the fuel used by most older reactors and nuclear power plants. Creating high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), the more concentrated fuel used in most modern reactors, could easily take double that amount.

LIS Technologies can now create LEU, HALEU, or both in a fraction of the time.

The new laser setup can produce single-stage LEU and dual-stage HALEU. “It means you irradiate the uranium once, and it's enriched from natural all the way to the LEU level,” Liebenberg explains. “If you irradiate it again, if you take that LEU and you're in the second stage, you can go all the way to HALEU.”

It will be a few years before two-step laser enrichment is available on a commercial scale. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licensing takes time, and LIS Technologies will need to demonstrate the technology and its scalability in order to gain full approval.

Still, it’s an exciting time for nuclear energy and U.S. innovation. If all goes as planned, the country’s nuclear sector will thrive, and a domestic fuel pipeline will establish unprecedented energy security.