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Nuclear Power
Published in Sheila Devasahayam, Kim Dowling, Manoj K. Mahapatra, Sustainability in the Mineral and Energy Sectors, 2016
Gas centrifuge enrichment. The gaseous diffusion process is very energy intensive, so in recent years most countries have turned to a newer process called the gas centrifuge enrichment process (Figure 22.3). The gas centrifuge enrichment process uses a large number of interconnected centrifuges, or rotating cylinders. The UF6 gas is placed in a cylinder and rotated at high speed. The rotation creates a strong centrifugal force that pushes the heavier gas molecules (containing 238U) toward the outside of the cylinder and the lighter molecules (containing 235U) toward the center. Thus, the gas at the center is enriched very slightly. This gas is withdrawn from the center and fed into the next higher stage. Even though it takes hundreds of centrifuges to enrich the uranium enough to be used in reactors, the process requires far less energy and far fewer stages to accomplish a given level of enrichment than is the case for the gaseous diffusion process.
Optimized Separative Power of Hyperspeed Iguassu Gas Centrifuge: Dependence on the Rotor Diameter and Velocity
Published in Nuclear Science and Engineering, 2020
Sergey V. Bogovalov, Vladimir D. Borman, Ivan V. Tronin, Vladimir N. Tronin
On October 4, 1957, the first Earth satellite (Sputnik) was launched in USSR. The whole world knew about this event. But, on November 4 of the same year, an event occurred that almost no one knew about. The first plant for centrifugal enrichment of uranium was put into operation in USSR. Currently, centrifugal enrichment of uranium is the most commercially efficient technology for producing fuel for nuclear power plants. A key element of the centrifugal technology is a gas centrifuge (GC) in which gas rotates at a high speed and is compressed to the walls of the rotor by centrifugal acceleration, of the order of g. Despite the more than 60-year history of exploration of GCs, the physics of the processes of flow and separation in the GC remains not fully clear. Experimentally, it is a very difficult task to measure any parameters of the gas in the rotating rotor. Therefore, progress in the development of GCs was achieved mainly due to semiempirical studies that did not clarify details of the physical processes in GCs.