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Nuclear and Hydro Power
Published in Anco S. Blazev, Energy Security for The 21st Century, 2021
Purified, pure uranium, metal (not UO2) can be enriched into the isotope U-235, by combining the pure uranium metal with fluorine to form uranium hexafluoride gas (UF6). The gas is then processed via gaseous diffusion, or through a gas centrifuge, where it undergoes isotope separation. This process produces low-enriched uranium containing up to 20% U-235, or the type used in most large civilian electric-power reactors.
The Other Energy Markets
Published in Anco S. Blazev, Global Energy Market Trends, 2021
Purified, pure uranium, metal (not UO2) can be enriched into the isotope U-235, by combining the pure uranium metal with fluorine to form uranium hexafuoride gas (UF6). The gas is then processed via gaseous diffusion, or through a gas centrifuge, where it undergoes isotope separation. This process produces low-enriched uranium containing up to 20% U-235, or the type used in most large civilian electric-power generating nuclear reactors.
Mineral Resources, Pollution Control, and Nanotechnology
Published in Stephen L. Gillett, Nanotechnology and the Resource Fallacy, 2018
Overall, it seems that nanotechnology has little to offer directly to isotope separation except in the general sense of cheap nanofabrication. For example, fabricating conventional isotope separators, such as diffusion membranes, at the nanoscale may yield significant improvements in both cost and speed.
Nuclear Science for the Manhattan Project and Comparison to Today’s ENDF Data
Published in Nuclear Technology, 2021
The high potential value of plutonium for a bomb was independently perceived around 1939 to 1940 by scientists in the United States, Britain, and Germany, based on the understanding of fission embodied in Bohr and Wheeler’s 1939 paper, probably even before plutonium was first created in 1940. Early insights from the United States and Germany have been discussed by Bernstein,17 including by Louis Turner (Princeton) in 1940 and by von Weizsäcker in July 1940 on 239Np “Eka-Rhenium” produced from n + 238U capture (the 239Pu insight in Germany came 1 year later in 1941 by Houtermans). British insights around the same time are described as follows. At that time, it was typical to refer to plutonium as “94”; more exotically, Bretscher in Cambridge referred to it as “the body 94X239.” Scientists quickly appreciated its two main advantages: it would likely have even more favorable fission properties compared to 235U, and it could be bred and chemically separated from the abundant 238U isotope in a reactor, as opposed to the challenging isotope separation route for the minor 235U isotope. Histories of this era give credit to Egon Bretscher, Feather, and Rotblat for their first 1940 considerations of the utility of plutonium for a weapon (Ref. 18, p. 208). Surprisingly, this important insight is described by many sources, including in Gowing’s classic book,10 but without a reference to a Bretscher primary source. I was able to track down such a source in Bretscher’s papers held by Churchill College Cambridge’s Archives. Bretscher did indeed write with great perception and intelligence. In Report II, December 19, 1940, Bretscher and Feather19 wrote (p. 1):