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Separative work – the amount of separation done by a Uranium enrichment process – is a function of the concentrations of the feedstock, the enriched output, and the depleted tailings; and is expressed in units which are so calculated as to be proportional to the total input (energy / machine operation time) and to the mass processed.
The National Enrichment Facility (NEF) is a nuclear facility for the enrichment of uranium associated with the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The plant uses a gas centrifuge technology known as Zippe-type centrifuges. It is located 5 miles (8.0 km) east of Eunice, New Mexico. [1]
Enriched uranium is a type of uranium in which the percent composition of uranium-235 (written 235 U) has been increased through the process of isotope separation.Naturally occurring uranium is composed of three major isotopes: uranium-238 (238 U with 99.2732–99.2752% natural abundance), uranium-235 (235 U, 0.7198–0.7210%), and uranium-234 (234 U, 0.0049–0.0059%).
[1] [3] Since becoming fully operational and through the end of the Cold War, the facility's enrichment capacity ranged from 1 million SWU/yr to 6-7 million SWU/yr. [1] In the early 1960s, the Soviets began to replace their gaseous diffusion machines with centrifuges, but it was not until 1990 that the final gaseous diffusion cascade was shut ...
The Soviet Union began replacing its gaseous diffusion equipment with centrifuge technology in the 1960s. By the end of the Cold War, when all equipment had been replaced, the facility had the capacity to produce almost 12 million SWU per year. [4] The facility is now converted to civilian use and no longer produces highly enriched uranium.
If natural uranium is enriched to 3% U-235, it can be used as fuel for light water nuclear reactors. If it is enriched to 90% uranium-235, it can be used for nuclear weapons . Diagram of the principles of a Zippe-type gas centrifuge with U-238 represented in dark blue and U-235 represented in light blue.
[5] [6] The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff concluded that fundamental design flaws which were known by plant operators and the NRC itself were at the heart of the problem and should have been fixed years before. “In summary, the information was available and known which could have prevented this overcooling transient; but in ...
Isotope separation is the process of concentrating specific isotopes of a chemical element by removing other isotopes. The use of the nuclides produced is varied. The largest variety is used in research (e.g. in chemistry where atoms of "marker" nuclide are used to figure out reaction mechanisms).