Atomic Show #342 – Christo Liebenberg, President, LIS Technologies
LIS Technologies (LIST) is a young company with deep historical roots. CRISLA (Condensation Repression Isotope Selective Laser Activation), its laser isotope separation concept was developed and tested during the late 1980s and early 1990s under the leadership of Dr. Jeff Eerkens. Unfortunately, the path towards commercializing the technology hit a multi-decade detour as the result of terrible timing and a slow analytical process.
At the same time that the CRISLA development effort began producing intriguing results, there was a major effort to consume excess enriched uranium from the former Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons complex. The solution was to convert that material into fuel so that it could be consumed in U.S. nuclear power plants.
The enriched uranium consumption program, known as “Megatons to Megawatts“, arguably made the world safer and provided significant benefits to American electricity consumers. Megatons to Megawatts also flooded the world’s enriched uranium market and eliminated investor interest in improving existing processes.
The CRISLA project was halted.
Just before the project was abruptly cancelled, the development team conducted several test runs and sent the produced samples out to be tested. The team was disbanded before the results came back. When they were finally available, they were filed in a place that wasn’t accessible to the development team. More than 20 years after the 1993 tests were conducted Jeff Eerkens, the team leader, learned that the technology that he and his team had built worked far better than they realized.
Christo Liebenberg, the current LIST President, visited the Atomic Show to share a more complete version of the above story. He tells us just how much better the enrichment results were compared to all other alternatives. He helps explain the importance and implications if successful commercial development can be achieved.
He explains how the equipment from the 1990s test was stored and recovered and he describes the success efforts to restore and improve the low pressure CO lasers at the heart of the system. He explains how LIST was formed and how it attracted the attention of Jay Yu, its Chairman, CEO, co-founder and initial investor.
Christo’s resume seems to have been designed to prepare him for the role of leading a laser isotope separation company. This is quoted from the LIST web site team page.
Mr Liebenberg started his career in the 1980’s at the Atomic Energy Corporation of South Africa where he later spearheaded the optimization of enrichment parameters of the Molecular Laser Isotope Separation (MLIS) process. By the end of the 1990’s his journey led him to Australia where he later joined Silex Systems Ltd as their Laser Manager, and continued this role at Global Laser Enrichment (GLE) in Wilmington, NC where he played a key role in the architecture of the Test Loop Facility. In 2012 he joined the research team at ASML where he was intricately involved with the R&D of state-of-the-art CO2 laser systems to generate EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet), used today to manufacture modern semiconductor chips.
We talked about the changes in the enrichment market and its growing need for both technological improvement and additional production capacity. The situation is far different today compared to what existed at the time CRISLA was initially shelved.
We ended our conversation with a personal inspiration story about Jeff Eerkens, the father of laser isotope enrichment. The great news is that he has lived long enough to participate in the process of developing his inventions.
I have no doubt that you will find this show to be informative and entertaining.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 56:23 — 53.8MB)
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