GoKawiilActinide becomes first startup to produce HALEU using calutron technology
Dallas-based Actinide has produced high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) on its first-generation calutron, a machine that weeks earlier was enriching ytterbium-176 for Oklo Isotopes. An accredited lab assayed the material at 15.38% enrichment, meeting the U.S. legal definition of HALEU, though it was made under a laboratory-scale exclusion for research purposes rather than commercial production.
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The U.S. currently lacks a domestic supply chain for HALEU fuel, since centrifuge plants produce only gas form and no commercial deconversion capacity exists to turn it solid. Actinide's approach, if scaled, could sidestep that bottleneck by producing solid HALEU directly using cheaper, faster, reconfigurable machines instead of billion-dollar centrifuge facilities. This could matter greatly for advanced reactor developers who depend on HALEU but currently have no viable domestic source.
- Actinide is the first startup to produce HALEU, using calutron-based isotope separation.
- The material was assayed at 15.38% enrichment, within the legal HALEU range, but only in research quantities.
- The technology could bypass the U.S.'s missing deconversion infrastructure by producing solid HALEU directly, unlike centrifuge plants.
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Published there as: “Dallas startup enriches Uranium”
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