Update: This version mentions how a slower pace of GLE development will affect any plans for a new GLE facility on the GE campus in Castle Hayne.

GE Hitachi’s Global Laser Enrichment (GLE) project will shift into lower gear for the foreseeable future and concentrate its continued activities on its plant in Castle Hayne, the company announced Friday.

GLE will “pace development of the technology in alignment with market conditions,” the company’s release stated.

Those market conditions have declined, said GE Hitachi spokesman Christopher White.  As world-wide demand has slumped, prices have plummeted. White said that, since GEH began development of its GLE project in 2007, the global price of enriched uranium has fallen 50 percent.

“The forecast is that prices will remain depressed for at least several years,” he said.

Scaling back its pace of development means shuttering operations at a contract facility near Oak Ridge, Tennessee, whose efforts White said were in support of GE Hitachi's to advance laser enrichment technology.

“We’re placing the facility in safe storage mode,” White said.

Locally, the work being done by about two dozen contractors is being evaluated as part of the slowdown, White said, adding that efforts won't stop.

“Today we continue to develop the technology toward a commercial scale,” he added. “We are still interested and optimistic about the technology.”

Asked what impact the slowdown will likely have on the tentative plans GE had to build a new facility for the GLE project, White said in an email, "In the short term, we are adjusting our spend in the program in line with market realities. This adjustment will impact the pace of continued development, including potential construction of a laser enrichment facility."

Longer term, he said, "we will continue to adjust our investment according to the direction of the market and our opportunities."
 
White also said that GE Hitachi will continue to negotiate with the U.S. Department of Energy on the possibility of building a GLE facility in Paducah, Kentucky. In February of this year, Kentucky governor Steve Beshear gave permission for a transfer of state-owned land to GEH for the facility, according to a report from WKMS at Murray State University. In May, WKMS reported that the Paducah Area Community Reuse Organization had announced it was working with the company on plans to construct the facility.

GE Hitachi’s Global Laser Enrichment project has further developed new technology created by an Australian company. The highly classified technique, called Separation of Isotopes by Laser Excitation (SILEX), uses a laser tuned to a specific frequency to siphon away the desired isotope uranium-235 from the gaseous form of uranium, White said in an interview in October 2012.

In the same interview, White said GLE’s SILEX technique is a cheaper, more efficient process of enriching uranium than other methods, including the current standard involving centrifuges.