In recent years, shifting geopolitical tensions have forced the United States into a reckoning of sorts. Many U.S. businesses are developing efficient nuclear reactors, but the fuel for those reactors comes almost entirely from Russia.
By 2024, U.S. authorities realized this was a major liability when it came to energy security. Now, the country is focused on producing nuclear energy domestically, and LIS Technologies is shaping up to lead the charge.
Before the U.S. started relying on imported enriched uranium to power its reactors, there was a promising domestic nuclear industry. One of that industry's emerging players was the CRISLA (Condensation Repression Isotope Separation by Laser Activation) process of uranium enrichment.
The CRISLA process was discovered in the 1980s by Dr. Jeff Eerkens, a cofounder of LIS Technologies who is widely considered the "Father of Laser Enrichment." The enrichment method uses lasers to isolate U-235, the uranium isotope needed to create fuel for nuclear reactors.
The lasers selectively excite U-235 isotopes, making it faster and easier to collect and concentrate them. The total U-235 concentration determines the type of nuclear fuel—low-enriched uranium (LEU) is up to 5%, and high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) is up to 20%.
CRISLA showed great promise decades ago. So why did the U.S. stop creating its own commercial qualities of enrichment and favor importing nuclear fuel? The answer is simple: The imports were cheaper.
"CRISLA technology was showing promise," says LIS Technologies' co-founder and CEO Christo Liebenberg. "But in 1989, the iron curtain of the Soviet Union came down, and the world markets became available for Russia. Russia is a huge producer of enriched uranium, and they sold it for less than half the price of what it was."
Although the United States had been developing multiple methods of uranium enrichment, domestic production of enriched uranium ground to a halt. "So that's why CRISLA was stopped in 1993," says Liebenberg. "That's why AVLIS was stopped too. . In fact, the whole U.S. nuclear industry came to a standstill."
"We were the world's biggest exporter of nuclear fuel and nuclear services," he adds. "Today, we are the world's biggest importer of all of that."
That changed in 2024 when the Biden administration passed the Prohibiting Uranium Imports Act in the interest of national security. Suddenly, there was a vacuum—while the U.S. had plenty of advanced nuclear reactors, it had no reliable way to fuel them.
That prompted the Department of Energy (DOE) to announce the Low-Enriched Uranium (LEU) Enrichment Acquisition Program. The DOE awarded contracts to a handful of companies, including LIS Technologies, to encourage the domestic production of LEU nuclear fuel.
Energy independence is of prime importance now. To help restore that independence, LIS Technologies is going back to the CRISLA process. Eerkens and Liebenberg have fine-tuned the process, and they believe it will be possible to enrich uranium on a large scale early in the next decade.
Relying on the CRISLA process for domestic nuclear fuel would add another layer of security—CRISLA is the only patented laser enrichment technology originating in the United States. By using domestic technology to create nuclear fuel on U.S. soil, the country can dramatically reduce the risk of foreign interference.
Because of CRISLA's history, LIS Technologies and the U.S. government believe the company can deliver on its promises.
"We want to actually say to the public, we're not just trying to do this," says LIS Technologies Chairman and President Jay Yu. "It's already been done."
Both government officials and the LIS Technologies team understand the importance of protecting CRISLA from potential misuse. Its efficiency means it can be used to produce a steady supply of fuel for a growing number of nuclear reactors. However, that same efficiency could also make it useful for developing devastatingly powerful nuclear weapons.
"Our intentions are to do this only for peaceful applications," says Liebenberg. "If this technology comes out and a foreign actor decides, 'Okay, these guys are making very good progress,' they might use it for not-so-peaceful purposes. So that's why this technology will have to be secured."
Yu sheds some light on how that protection might work. "Our technology will be classified by the United States DOE eventually," he explains. "After we show that we can rebirth this technology and enrich uranium at 'practical quantities,' the US DOE will come down and basically put security measures around us. And then our technology will be removed from the public domain like our patent."
It's difficult to predict how global politics will develop in the coming years. However, thanks to LIS Technologies and the CRISLA process, it looks like the U.S. is headed toward a future where clean, safe nuclear energy is plentiful.
