Luminos Nuclear is a specialized division of Nanocut d.o.o. — a Slovenian engineering company leveraging decades of power electronics expertise to solve one of the nuclear industry's most persistent problems: reliable, long-life LED lighting in high-radiation environments.
We didn't set out to build lighting for radiation environments. We set out to build the best LED luminaires possible — and the engineering path led us somewhere far more demanding, and far more important.
Today, Luminos Nuclear products operate wherever ionising radiation makes standard lighting unreliable: power generation, medical physics, research, industrial processing, and secure storage. Anywhere the environment is too demanding for off-the-shelf solutions, our products are specified. Every installation is a direct result of solving problems from first principles — problems that no catalogue product was designed to address.
Established in Hrastnik, Slovenia. Initial focus on high-quality industrial LED lighting — building deep in-house expertise in LED driver design, thermal management, and light engineering.
Nuclear facilities were still running on outdated fluorescent lighting because standard LED luminaires fail rapidly under gamma exposure. The LED driver — not the LEDs themselves — was the weak link. We committed to solving it from first principles.
Drawing on 40+ years of combined SMPS engineering experience, our team designed a radiation-hardened LED driver from scratch — components selected for radiation tolerance, encapsulated in a neutron-absorbing stainless steel housing.
Complete assembled luminaires — driver included — independently tested at ENEA Casaccia Research Center, Italy. 47 hours of continuous irradiation at 3.3 kGy/h. Total dose: 156 kGy. All units remained fully operational at test completion.
Every product decision, every material choice, every test we conduct comes back to these four principles. Each one is an engineering constraint we impose on ourselves — measurable, verifiable, and reflected in every product we make.
Tested to 156 kGy at ENEA Casaccia — one of Europe's foremost nuclear research institutions. Complete assembled luminaires, driver included, under active irradiation for 47 continuous hours. Not component-level testing.
Up to 220 lm/W LED efficiency, 160 lm/W overall. In facilities where maintenance requires scheduled access and dose planning, energy savings and reduced replacement frequency translate directly into lower personnel radiation exposure.
Our radiation-hardened LED driver is not sourced from a third party. Designed in-house, fully owned by Nanocut d.o.o., and used without compromise across every Luminos Nuclear product in production.
20-year designed product lifetime. In radiation zones where every maintenance entry requires protective equipment and dose planning, a luminaire that doesn't fail for two decades is not a feature — it is an operational requirement.
Our luminaires are engineered around DERCCAT — a foundational framework of seven fundamental physical properties that dictate the performance, thermal dynamics, and lifespan of any LED lighting system. We work from first principles: every property interacts with the others, and optimising for one without accounting for the rest leads to system failure. We harmonize these physical laws to achieve the maximum possible efficacy and reliability in radiation environments.
The scattering of light as it passes through or reflects off materials. Critical for beam shaping: dictates how raw LED output is spread to achieve uniform illumination, reduce glare, and blend colour — balancing visual comfort with luminous transmission.
The conversion of electrical energy into light by the LED semiconductor. We optimise quantum efficiency to maximise useful luminous flux, ensuring the correct spectral power distribution with the highest possible energy-to-light conversion ratio.
The redirecting of incident light by a surface rather than absorbing or transmitting it. Advanced micro-optical surfaces — including our 98% nanotechnology reflectors — recapture light that would otherwise be lost, directing every available lumen toward the intended target.
The transfer of heat through material by particle collision and electron movement. Efficient thermal pathways move heat away from the sensitive LED junction to external heatsinks — excessive junction temperature directly degrades both efficiency and component lifespan.
The transfer of heat from a surface to surrounding air through fluid movement. Our thermal designs maximise passive airflow across heatsink geometry, utilising natural convection — as air heats and rises, cooler air replaces it, with no moving parts to fail.
The uptake of incident light by a material, converting it to heat rather than transmitting or reflecting it. Minimising internal optical absorption in reflectors, lenses, and housings is essential — defined by the ratio of absorbed to incident luminous flux.
The ability of a material to transmit light with minimal scattering or attenuation. Maintaining high optical transmission in lenses and protective covers over the luminaire's lifespan prevents clouding, yellowing, and beam quality degradation — especially critical after extended radiation exposure.
All seven engineered in harmony, guided by first principles. Optimising one in isolation leads to system failure — the luminaire must perform as a unified whole.
Radiation-hardened luminaire design is a total-system problem. Every component — optical materials, housing alloys, encapsulants, and drive electronics — must be selected and qualified for the radiation environment. Standard luminaires begin failing at cumulative doses as low as 150–1,000 Gy. Our products are rated to 150 kGy: up to a thousand times beyond that threshold.
At the core of this is our proprietary LED driver — the component that determines whether a luminaire survives or fails in a radiation field. Standard driver designs rely on components that degrade under ionising radiation, causing loss of regulation, overheating, and eventual failure. Our driver was engineered from scratch, with every component selected for radiation tolerance. The entire assembly is encapsulated in a stainless steel housing with neutron-absorbing material.
Our LED package is also of our own design — manufactured by a qualified third party to our specification, using LED chips from a respected tier-one source. The result is a luminaire where every layer of the system, from the light-generating junction to the outermost housing, has been engineered rather than assembled from catalogue parts.
The complete luminaire — not components in isolation — was independently tested at ENEA Casaccia. 156 kGy. All units remained fully operational.
Not an off-the-shelf component. Engineered from scratch by our team, specifically for radiation environments.
Stainless steel housing with neutron-absorbing material. Standard in every Luminos Nuclear product — no exceptions.
Irradiated alongside the full luminaire at ENEA — not bench-tested in isolation. 156 kGy. All units passed.
The technology belongs to us. No licensing dependencies, no third-party supply chain risk.
Standard industrial LED products and complete company profile at our parent brand:
luminos.si
Tell us about your facility and radiation environment. Our engineers will respond within one working day.