COVER STORY | BEYOND URANIUM
Beyond uranium enrichment
Widely associated with uranium enrichment, isotope separation technologies
potentially have many other applications. NEi talks to Urenco Isotopes about how it is building a new supply chain for quantum computing
WHILE MANY MIGHT CONSIDER isotope enrichment a niche industry, the technology behind the uranium fuel cycle underpins the nuclear power generation sector. It is also fundamental to a rapidly expanding world of non-radioactive stable isotope applications spanning medicine, advanced materials, semiconductors, and even emerging use cases such as quantum computing. Although best known for uranium enrichment, Urenco
is also applying its centrifuge expertise to a growing range of stable isotope applications in medicine, research, semiconductors and quantum technologies. Through its specialist isotopes business, the company is positioning itself as an industrial-scale enabler of emerging technologies where isotopic purity, chemical conversion and supply reliability are critical to progress from lab to market. That role is becoming particularly relevant in quantum computing, where the performance of silicon- and germanium-based systems depends on highly controlled isotopic composition. For Urenco Isotopes, this is not simply an adjacent opportunity, but a natural extension of decades of enrichment and materials handling expertise. Speaking to Nuclear Engineering International, Martijn van Hezel, Head of
Commercial, Urenco Isotopes, outlines how decades of centrifuge expertise are now being applied far beyond the traditional nuclear fuel cycle. “Obviously, Urenco is known for its uranium enrichment by centrifuge technology, but isotopes is a different business unit making use of that same centrifuge technology, although not the same standard centrifuges themselves.” van Hezel explains. The business dates back more than three decades
to experiments carried out in Urenco’s R&D laboratories in Almelo in the Netherlands. Engineers originally explored whether gas centrifuge systems designed for uranium hexafluoride could also separate other gaseous compounds. “The question came up whether we could enrich other gases. That was tested in the same building where we are still located today. We still have the testing set up, which was used back then. Obviously modified and modernised, but the core is still there. It tells you something about the durability and life cycle of centrifuges and cascades,” observes van Hezel. However, unlike Urenco’s core uranium enrichment
business, which effectively produces just one product in varying enrichment levels, the isotopes division operates across a much broader spread of products.
Several isotopes exist in silicon, some of which are problematic for quantum computing purposes. Isotope enrichment or depletion is therefore a key enabler. Source: US DOE
36 | June 2026 |
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