Dispatch
Laser enrichment aims to turn Paducah's stored uranium waste into reactor fuel
MIT Technology Review reports on efforts to use laser-based isotope separation on the thousands of storage cylinders of depleted uranium waste sitting outside Paducah, Kentucky, left behind by a now-closed enrichment facility. The relevance to AI is the power stack underneath it: nuclear is the load-following, always-on generation source datacenter operators keep signing for, and domestic enrichment capacity is the current bottleneck on new reactor deployment. Treat this as an early-stage supply-chain signal rather than a near-term unlock — the reporting is original but the technology is not yet at commercial scale.
↳ Follow the thread