Laser enrichment increases nuclear terror threat

Scientists have long sought easier ways to make the costly material known as enriched uranium — the fuel of nuclear reactors and bombs, now produced only in giant industrial plants. One idea, a half-century old, has been to do it with nothing more substantial than lasers and their rays of concentrated light. This futuristic approach has always proved too expensive and difficult for anything but laboratory experimentation.

Until now. In a little-known effort, General Electric has successfully tested laser enrichment for two years and is seeking federal permission to build a $1 billion plant that would make reactor fuel by the tonne.

That might be good news for the nuclear industry. But critics fear that if the work succeeds, rogue states and terrorists could make bomb fuel in much smaller plants that are difficult to detect. Iran has already succeeded with laser enrichment in the lab, and nuclear experts worry that G.E.’s accomplishment might inspire Tehran to build a plant easily hidden from the world’s eyes. Backers of the laser plan call those fears unwarranted and praise the technology as a windfall for a world increasingly leery of fossil fuels that produce greenhouse gases.

But critics want a detailed risk assessment. Recently, they petitioned Washington for a formal evaluation of whether the laser initiative could backfire and speed the global spread of nuclear arms. “We’re on the verge of a new route to the bomb,” said Frank Hippel, a nuclear physicist who advised Bill Clinton.

New methods of enrichment are considered potentially dangerous because they can simplify the hardest part of building a bomb — obtaining the fuel.

G.E., one of the world’s largest companies, says its initial success began in 2009 at a facility just north of Wilmington, N.C., that is jointly owned with Hitachi.

Source: Hindustan Times