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Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and uranium enrichment have a decades-long history. World War II may have ended very differently without the uranium enriched at the K-25, S-50, and Y-12 plants. Thanks to LIS Technologies, uranium enrichment is making a comeback — this time, for peaceful use.
LIS Technologies is currently establishing itself in Tennessee to support the future development of its Chemical Reaction by Isotope Selective Activation (CRISLA) process, a laser-catalyzed uranium-enrichment technique that’s both cost-effective and highly efficient.
This expansion follows the Department of Energy’s $3.4 billion nuclear low-enriched uranium fuel initiative. In 2024, President Biden signed the Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act into law due to increasing global tensions.
The new law eliminates U.S. dependence on Russia for nuclear fuel, but it’s created an urgent need for enriched uranium within the U.S.
The Department of Energy awarded six contracts to companies committed to building an efficient, reliable supply chain for domestic nuclear fuel. One of those contracts was awarded to LIS Technologies, supported by NANO Nuclear Energy. LIS Technologies is the only laser uranium enrichment company originating in the United States.
LIS technologies is looking to reproduce the same successful historical results and to also now improve the CRISLA process to produce low-enriched uranium (LEU) and high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU). Both types of uranium enrichment are necessary. However, because most new advanced small nuclear reactors depend on HALEU, there’s an even greater demand for this nuclear fuel.
“The U.S. banned Russian imports, which also showed the country that a domestic supply needs to be developed,” says Jay Yu, Executive Chairman and President of LIS Technologies. Now, with this deficiency, there's a bottleneck, and the U.S. needs to find a reliable future source for HALEU. “We’re building these billion-dollar reactors, but we don't even have the fuel for them.”
LIS Technologies is embarking to reestablish itself as the next generation of technology by returning to the roots of domestic uranium enrichment, and not just by coming to Oak Ridge. Christo Liebenberg, co-founder and CEO of LIS Technologies, explains that the CRISLA enrichment process isn’t a new or unproven one.
“In the 1990s, the Soviet Union flooded the world markets with cheaper-priced fuel, and the world markets became reliant on Russia. Russia is a huge producer of enriched uranium,” says Liebenberg. “They sold enriched uranium for less than half the price compared to what it was.”
“That sunk many, many technologies,” he continues. “Our own CRISLA technology was actually on its way to further development. But investors decided, ‘Why should we develop this further? When countries could just buy it on the international market at a cheaper rate.’ So that's why CRISLA was stopped in 1993. That's why the whole U.S. nuclear industry came to a standstill, especially the U.S. nuclear industry.”
LIS Technologies is rebirthing CRISLA, and it’s unlikely that there are any organizations more qualified to do so — LIS Technologies co-founder and CTO Jeff Eerkens invented the CRISLA process and to many industry professionals, considered as the founding father of laser uranium enrichment.
Liebenberg, the company’s CEO, is a laser scientist who closely followed Eerkens’s development of CRISLA and created a model for commercially scaling it. Before founding LIS Technologies, Eerkens and Liebenberg co-founded CRISLA, Inc., in 2020.
The work LIS Technologies is embarking on is a triumph for U.S. energy security. However, it’s also set to have a tremendous impact on Oak Ridge and East Tennessee.
The companies’ seed funding round has already raised $22 million. As operations expand, they anticipate creating new local jobs.
LIS Technologies has the potential to create positive ripple effects beyond what many people realize. Nuclear power can efficiently generate electricity without polluting the air or contributing to climate change. Moreover, nuclear reactors can produce radioisotopes used in radiation therapy and other medical technologies.
The ban on Russian imports has created demand for nuclear fuel, which is only expected to grow.
“Right now, the U.S. is producing 100 gigawatts of electricity every year,” says Liebenberg. “It's roughly 1 gigawatt per LWR nuclear power plant. The projection is that by 2050, we need three times that amount of power. That means we need 200 gigawatts of extra power in the next 25 years, so roughly 200 additional nuclear power plants.”
This demand dovetails with innovations in other sectors. “The energy demand is just huge right now, especially with AI centers and data centers,” Liebenberg says. “There are so many applications and new countries that want electricity. So we want to produce new energy that's clean and carbon-neutral.”
The new shift toward nuclear energy, and the economic growth and technological innovation that come with it, indicates that positive change lies ahead for Oak Ridge and the U.S. as a whole.