There is a world-wide effort to develop soft x-ray lasers. However most of the x-ray laser concepts require large and expensive power sources to create the soft x-ray laser. Recently, a new soft x-ray laser concept has been suggested that requires significantly less power and, therefore, wouldbe considerably less expensive to create. The nd-like isoelectronic sequence (60 electrons) of high z elements could provide the basis for a soft x-ray laser. The nd-likeisoelectronic sequence is a natural extension of the successful neon- and nickel-like sequence lasers that were developed at the lawrence livermore national laboratory. Gain may be possible at approximately 70<143> for the 5f-5d transition in nd-like uranium. The potential advantage is that a medium power nd:glass laser is sufficient to create asoft x-ray laser under 100<143>. This would mean that soft x-ray laser research and experiments using a soft x-ray laser as a diagnostic tool would no longer be confined to the large national laboratories or large university researchlaboratories. If successful, coherent radiation around 70-100<143> (177-124ev) would be available to the larger scientific community for studies in photobiology, x-ray crystallography, materials research, and x-ray lithography.
