Global Laser Enrichment is getting a potential combined $98.9 million incentives package from the state of Kentucky and McCracken County to aid its development of a first-of-its-kind laser uranium enrichment facility in Paducah.
During Gov. Andy Beshear’s Team Kentucky meeting Thursday, GLE CEO Stephen Long said that the company’s planned Paducah Laser Enrichment Facility (PLEF) represents “a shared vision in economic development, community revitalization, technological leadership and establishment of a revitalized nuclear fuel supply chain.”
“We look forward to reasserting Paducah's leadership in nuclear enrichment technology,” Long said. “Paducah was the original hub of the first commercial enrichment technology in the U.S., and we look forward to bringing the first commercialization of third-generation uranium enrichment technology to that community.”
The planned PLEF, which has been in the works for more than a decade, aims to boost domestic production of enriched uranium in the U.S. and also support cleanup efforts at the former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant site, which served in a national defense capacity before it started to commercially produce fuel-grade uranium used to generate electricity in nuclear reactors in the mid-1960s. It ceased operations in 2013.
Beshear touted the company’s $1.76 billion project to bring the Paducah Laser Enrichment Facility online as “the single largest capital investment in western Kentucky history,” and one that’s expected to create 240 permanent jobs in the area.
“We're making history once again in western Kentucky,” Beshear said. “We're becoming a global leader for nuclear power, and the world is looking to us as energy demands keep rising.”
In a state release, McCracken County Judge Executive Craig Clymer called the GLE investment a “major win” for the far western Kentucky community and the United States.
“GLE will promote economic development in McCracken County through hundreds of skilled and stable jobs paying high wages; increased property tax and payroll tax for the County; positioning McCracken County as a major player in the advanced nuclear fuel cycle supply chain; converting thousands of tons of depleted uranium into valuable nuclear fuel reducing the U.S.’s reliance on foreign countries; and reducing time and expense of DOE cleanup at the site.”
President of Greater Paducah Economic Development Bruce Wilcox also said in the release that the project both “honors [the] region’s history in energy production” and “secures [its] future as a leader in next-generation nuclear technology.”
That $98.9 million in incentives funds – a combination of tax and other economic incentives – will only be fully awarded should GLE reach its agreed investment and job creation thresholds. Of those, $24 million will come through a 15-year agreement preliminarily approved by the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority Thursday. Another $3 million in tax incentives will come through the Kentucky Enterprise Initiative Act (KEIA), also approved by KEDFA.
That leaves $71.9 million in incentives to be accounted for.
Clymer told WKMS that he was unable to confirm how much the local government was contributing or the funding mechanism they hoped to use, saying he was under a nondisclosure agreement.
The western Kentucky investment record GLE broke was a short-lived one. Last August, General Matter announced plans to build a separate $1.5 billion uranium enrichment facility at the former PGDP, which neighbors the lot that GLE signed a deal to acquire in 2024.
GLE has had a deal with the U.S. Department of Energy since 2016 to use its proprietary molecular process to enrich 200,000 metric tons of depleted uranium “tails” in storage at the PGDP site.
This method of uranium enrichment has never been deployed commercially. It operates, 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.
Since GLE struck its initial deal, it has endeavored to take the third-generation nuclear technology and push it toward commercial viability. The company, formerly owned by General Electric and Hitachi, is now 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 Nuclear Regulatory Commission accepted GLE’s licensing application in August and, in September, the company reported it had completed “a large-scale enrichment demonstration” at a North Carolina facility that proved its proprietary technique could work at commercial scale.
Earlier this year, GLE was awarded $28 million by the U.S. Department of Energy to “continue advancing next generation uranium enrichment technology for the nuclear fuel cycle.”
GLE expects to begin enrichment operations by 2030.
