Silex Systems
🇦🇺 Sydney, AU · Active
Silex Systems is an Australian technology company, listed on the ASX, with its registered office at Lucas Heights in New South Wales. Its scientists developed SILEX, a way of separating isotopes with lasers, in Sydney in the 1990s. Uranium enrichment with the technology is licensed exclusively to Global Laser Enrichment (GLE), a jointly controlled venture. Silex says GLE's project at Paducah, Kentucky could produce up to 5 million pounds of uranium oxide a year for up to 30 years. Since August 2023 Silex has also been working to produce enriched silicon for quantum computing.
- Sector
- Fuel cycle
- Fuel
- High-assay low-enriched uranium, Low-enriched uranium
- Role
- Supplier
Terms
- High-assay low-enriched uranium
- High-assay low-enriched uranium: uranium enriched to between 5% and just under 20% uranium-235, as the US Department of Energy defines it. It is still formally low-enriched, because the international line for highly enriched uranium is 20%, which is why many designs specify 19.75%. The binding supply constraint for many advanced reactor designs. The 5 to 10% part, which carries lighter US physical-security requirements than material from 10% up, is also tagged as LEU+. A developer calling fuel in that band 'LEU' is making a labelling choice, not describing a different enrichment.
- Low-enriched uranium
- Uranium enriched to 5% uranium-235 or less, typically 3 to 5%: the range almost all power reactors use. Formally, anything below 20% is low-enriched; this site holds the band from 5% to just under 20% separately as HALEU, with its 5 to 10% part also tagged as LEU+. A fuel above 5% uranium-235 belongs in one of those, never here, whatever a developer's own materials call it.
- Enrichment
- Raising the fissile fraction of uranium. The chokepoint of the fission fuel cycle, and the step with the heaviest non-proliferation constraints.
People
- Craig RoyChair and Non-executive Director
- Dr Michael GoldsworthyManaging Director and CEO (Executive Director)
- Christopher WilksNon-executive Director
- Susan CorlettNon-executive Director
- Julie RussellChief Financial Officer and Company Secretary
- Dr Geordie GraetzChief Commercial Officer
- Peter PeinChief Technology Officer