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A few hundred thousand dollars worth of tech replacing what used to be a massive industrial investment is amazing. And I thought enriching uranium is something that counties with nukes go to extreme lengths to make it not accessible.
low-enrichment (~20%) is what's happening here.
the bad stuff, for nukes, is ~90% enrichment.
So this is basically a calutron... a huge mass spectrometer. 1940s technology, upgraded with state-of-the-now control systems, and electromagnets. A formidable engineering work, but more of a breakthrough from legislation and compliance perspective possibly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calutron
A few hundred thousand dollars worth of tech replacing what used to be a massive industrial investment is amazing. And I thought enriching uranium is something that counties with nukes go to extreme lengths to make it not accessible.
> And I thought enriching uranium is something that counties with nukes go to extreme lengths to make it not accessible. low-enrichment (~20%) is what's happening here. the bad stuff, for nukes, is ~90% enrichment.
To save HN a search: a stable isotope used as a neutron capture target, to produce lutetium-177[i], used in targeted radioligand therapies[ii]. Discussed once on HN[iii].
[i] https://isotopes.gov/Ytterbium-176_is_Available_Now
[ii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutetium_(177Lu)_vipivotide_te...
[iii] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40690196 ("Radioactive drugs strike cancer with precision (knowablemagazine.org)")
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m no expert, but I don’t believe that “high-assay low-enriched uranium” is the sort you can use in nuclear weapons, per it being “low-enriched”. According to the DOE, HALEU only goes up to 20% enrichment [0]. Nuclear weapons, it seems, need it to be enriched beyond 20% [1] [0] https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-high-assay-low-enric... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enriched_uranium
Dirty bombs
So this is basically a calutron... a huge mass spectrometer. 1940s technology, upgraded with state-of-the-now control systems, and electromagnets. A formidable engineering work, but more of a breakthrough from legislation and compliance perspective possibly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calutron
What has changed here to make them competitive again? Or are they counting on selling small quantities at close to any cost for R&D reactors?
Speaking of which, whatever happened to laser enrichment? That was apparently very promising at some point?
A few hundred thousand dollars worth of tech replacing what used to be a massive industrial investment is amazing. And I thought enriching uranium is something that counties with nukes go to extreme lengths to make it not accessible.
It's not that difficult from an engineering perspective, the tech is almost a century old. It's just that we will drop bombs on anyone who tries.
Nuclear nonproliferation relies on active enforcement.
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