After more than a decade of development, the world’s first commercial laser uranium enrichment facility is one step closer to becoming a reality in far western Kentucky.
Officials with Global Laser Enrichment announced in a Wednesday release that the company has finalized a 665-acre land deal it inked earlier this year with the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources and the Paducah-McCracken County Industrial Development Authority.
"We greatly appreciate the collaborative efforts of our community and state partners in Kentucky that have been instrumental in finalizing this land acquisition,” GLE CEO Stephen Long said in the release. “We are excited to continue our partnership with the Commonwealth as we work towards a commercialization decision and maintaining our deployment target of no later than 2030."
In a statement release Wednesday, Gov. Andy Beshear praised the “potential major economic development project” that is estimated to create as many as 300 full-time jobs for Kentuckians.
“Moving our commonwealth forward takes cooperation and innovation, and this important project is the product of a lot of both,” Beshear said.
The land is adjacent to the former U.S. Department of Energy first-generation Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PGDP) and its stores of depleted uranium “tails,” or spent nuclear fuel. PGDP, opened in 1952, served in a national defense capacity until it started to produce fuel-grade uranium used to generate electricity in nuclear reactors in the mid-1960s and ceased operations in 2013.
The company hopes to build a more than $1 billion facility on the adjacent site to capitalize on a contract it signed with the U.S. Department of Energy in 2016 to use its proprietary molecular process to enrich 200,000 metric tons of depleted uranium “tails” stored at the former plant. This would enable the company to create new nuclear fuel while it accelerates cleanup activities at the legacy site.
Company officials estimate that’s enough for its potential facility to do “30 to 40 years worth of processing.” Once the spent fuel has been enriched to the level of natural uranium, it could then be further enriched or utilized at other enrichment facilities or in nuclear power plants.
This form of uranium enrichment has never been deployed commercially. It works, in principle, by using lasers to selectively vibrate only the uranium-235 molecules in the tails leftover from the gaseous diffusion process. It then separates those out from the inert uranium-238 molecules also present in the depleted nuclear fuel.
GLE, formerly owned by General Electric and Hitachi, is 51% owned by Silex – an Australian nuclear tech company that pioneered the enrichment technique – and 49% owned by Cameco, a Canada-based nuclear fuel provider. The project has been in the works for more than a decade.
The state release said the company’s laser-based technology “provides increased efficiency to the enrichment process compared with existing methods,” but that technology is still undergoing testing. In October, a company official said that scientists were preparing to test the commercial capabilities of its proprietary method at a facility in Wilmington, North Carolina.
Nima Ashkeboussi, vice president of government relations and communications for GLE, said they are still working on a large-scale commercial demonstration in the wake of the land deal announcement.
Greater Paducah Economic Development president and CEO Bruce Wilcox said that modeling done on the potential project by the group suggests that – excluding a construction effort – the facility could have as much as an estimated $125 million recurring annual economic impact on the local economy.
“As I understand it, it’s the country’s largest depository of unenriched uranium that we have. So it’s a fantastic opportunity for GLE to come in and produce LEU, low-enriched uranium,” Wilcox said. “The potential is huge for the local community and western Kentucky.”
The project is contingent on DOE funding and Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing, as well support from industry, community and state partners.
The company is working to support its pending license application and environmental report submissions to the NRC. GLE officials say they’re on track to submit the environmental report to the agency in December, with plans to submit a license application to NRC in the summer of 2025.
What does the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources have to do with this?
The land GLE is acquiring formerly belonged to Kentucky Fish and Wildlife as a part of the West Kentucky Wildlife Management Area (WMA). The agency and its commission agreed to swap the land for more than 1,000 acres in Fulton County acquired by the Paducah-McCracken County Industrial Development Authority and funded by GLE.
Per the state release, the new Fulton County property – which will be called the Choate Tract – is along the Mississippi River and will be added to the Obion Creek WMA. It’s expected to open to statewide regulations for hunting and fishing in spring 2025. The transferred portion of West Kentucky WMA will stay open for public use through February 2025.
Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Commissioner Rich Storm said in the state release that the deal will provide “much needed public hunting access, hiking, wildlife viewing and other wildlife related opportunities” in the area.
“This was a creative and carefully constructed exchange that will not only benefit Paducah and nearby communities, but it will also benefit many wildlife species and the outdoors enthusiasts who visit Western Kentucky,” he said.
The property – which the state release indicates is frequently flooded by the Mississippi River – is enrolled in the Wetland Reserve Easement Program with the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Resource Conservation Service with plans to restore it to a bottomland hardwood forest and wetland complex that will be “especially attractive to waterfowl.”
