Will secret technology help rogue nations get nuclear weapons?

Before that happens, however, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) must evaluate GLE's application to build a commercial SILEX plant. The commission's main focus is on safety, NRC documents show, not proliferation risks.

"We request that the Commission make the potential of this facility to contribute ... to the increased risk of nuclear proliferation an explicit factor in its decision [about licensing a commercial SILEX plant]," eight nonproliferation experts wrote the NRC in September.

In other words, SILEX needs to be carefully evaluated for its potential to foster nuclear proliferation, with an eye to putting more safeguards in place.

A single word explains their concern: Khan.

A poor track record on nuclear secrets

Pakistani metallurgist A.Q. Khan, working in the late 1970s for the European uranium enrichment consortium URENCO, is believed to have stolen blueprints of the company's gas-centrifuge enrichment process. By all accounts, Dr. Khan was instrumental in helping Pakistan build its own enrichment plants to supply material for bombs. He also sold designs and centrifuge parts to nations that included Libya, Iran, and North Korea – and offered them to Iraq, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Could a future Khan steal the secrets of enriching uranium with lasers?

"The safeguarding of the Global Laser Enrichment technology has been our leadership's most important priority since GE acquired the exclusive rights to develop and commercialize the technology," said Jack Fuller, president of GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, at a nuclear security conference last month. GE licensed SILEX from an Australian company of that name in 2006.

Mr. Fuller's company indicates it might be willing to accept international inspections if required to do so.

"While we are designing in anticipation that the GLE facility would be made eligible for [International Atomic Energy Agency] inspections, the US government will make the final decision" on IAEA inspections, GE spokeswoman Catherine Stengel wrote in an e-mail.

The government hasn't signaled its intentions regarding such inspections. The Department of Energy (DOE), State Department, and Nuclear Regu­la­tory Commission, among others, are monitoring SILEX's development. At least some officials are confident SILEX will stay under wraps.

"I find it hard to see how much more scrutiny is needed," says one DOE official, who oversees classified nuclear information and spoke on condition of anonymity. "SILEX is classified data. We're all keeping an eye on them.... Let's let them develop their technology. Let's see if this works."

SILEX's complexity still an obstacle

Others caution that it's only a matter of time before the secret gets out.

"The history of keeping dangerous nuclear technology secret is pretty poor," says Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, a Washington think tank. "An early enrichment approach called 'gaseous diffusion' technology got out and, after that, so did centrifuge technology. The question is: How would we handle this when SILEX gets out?"

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