Paducah Laser Enrichment Facility

Paducah Laser Enrichment Facility is a enrichment facility operated by Global Laser Enrichment in United States. It has a capacity of 6,000 tSWU/yr as of 2026, about 9% of world enrichment capacity.

The only enrichment project anywhere using laser separation rather than centrifuges, a technology that has been fifteen years from commercial for about fifty years. Its purpose inverts the usual one: rather than enriching natural uranium, it would re-enrich the Department of Energy's depleted uranium tails back to natural grade, about 100,000 tonnes of it over thirty years. That makes it the only serious proposal anywhere to treat the depleted uranium stockpile as a resource rather than a liability. Global Laser Enrichment has also applied to enrich to 8% U-235, which would put it in HALEU territory. Demonstration work at the Wilmington test loop finished in October 2025.

At the market indicator. 6,000 tSWU/yr of nameplate capacity, valued at US$ 200.00 per SWU spot, comes to roughly US$ 1.20 billion a year, or US$ 1.10 billion at the long-term indicator. Treat both as scale, not revenue: most volume moves under contracts signed years earlier at prices neither figure reflects, and nothing here is netted against the cost of producing it. The indicators, and forty years of history behind them, are on fuel market prices.