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Laser technology increases nuclear power danger

Laser Nuclear Technology Might Pose Security Risk by Richard Harris  NPR  12 April 2010, “…..a new technology that’s been developed to enrich uranium. It’s intended to make fuel for nuclear power plants — but it could be used for weapons, too. This technology uses lasers to separate out the desired isotope of uranium…..But the downside is that a laser-based enrichment plant can be much smaller and use much less electricity. And that could make a clandestine operation much harder to detect, he says.

“That’s the worry — things are starting to get so small and so efficient that it’s below the detection limit,” Slakey says. “Which creates an enormous proliferation challenge.”

More than a dozen nations have tried at one time or another to develop laser enrichment technologies, Slakey says. Most gave up, but an Australian company called Silex has apparently succeeded.

That technology has been licensed to General Electric-Hitachi in the United States, and that company has applied for a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to build a plant………..Slakey, at Georgetown, doubts whether strong secrecy measures alone will be adequate in this case.

“There’s been a number of different technologies to enrich uranium,” Slakey says. “Every single one of them — despite best efforts to keep secrets — every single one of them has proliferated.”

Laser Nuclear Technology Might Pose Security Risk : NPR

April 12, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, technology | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear technology, nuclear weapons, radioactive, uranium