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Actinide is first startup to produce high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU)
31–40 of 94 posts
Re: Actinide is first startup to produce high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU)
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dirty bombs
Uranium-235 isn't useful for dirty bombs: it's too long-lived and not radioactive enough. Making dangerous levels of radiation requires short-lived isotopes. Some of these are the products of uranium fission, which is why spent uranium fuel is a radiation hazard. But isolating U-235 just to fission it to get radioactive isotopes like cesium-137 would not be the easiest way to get them.
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Re: Actinide is first startup to produce high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU)
#33So will we start bombing Dallas now?
Hegseth is on it
Re: Actinide is first startup to produce high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU)
#34[flagged]
I like the part where you act like they would have ever had images otherwise
Re: Actinide is first startup to produce high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU)
#35[flagged]
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Re: Actinide is first startup to produce high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU)
#36[flagged]
>Private enterprise enriching uranium is a seriously worrying development... Or seriously exciting. We might actually get affordable, clean nuclear energy this century.
Urenco USA is a private enterprise that enriches uranium. It built its first American enrichment plant 20 years ago, and lately it has been expanding capacity:
https://urencousa.com/about/our-history
The parent Urenco company has been operating private uranium enrichment plants in Europe since the 1970s.
Re: Actinide is first startup to produce high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU)
#37So 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
IIRC Calutron's were basically abandoned because they were massively inefficient compared to gaseous diffusion and, particularly, centrifuges. 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?
Well, for one thing, the only existing Yb-176 production facilities are in Russia. That means demand for a domestic supply is pretty high right now.
The other thing is that for a nuclear reactor, you need many kilograms of uranium. But for a Pluvicto patient, you need less than a gram of ytterbium.
Re: Actinide is first startup to produce high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU)
#38So 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
IIRC Calutron's were basically abandoned because they were massively inefficient compared to gaseous diffusion and, particularly, centrifuges. 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?
Take these numbers with a grain of salt because I got them by chatting with AIs, but if you're producing electricity from HALEU, then centrifuges require reinvesting So calutrons will always be less energy efficient than centrifuges, but if the capital cost and construction time is low enough, calutrons might still be economically viable.
Re: Actinide is first startup to produce high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU)
#39So 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
That's fine
Totally agree, just summarized what I found in the press release. Even boring engineering is honest work, and this is not boring, even if not cutting edge in my understanding. Nuclear operations have their special challenges which need special care, also from engineering side. Still I think this is less of an engineering news.
Anyways, I didn't mean to downplay it.
Re: Actinide is first startup to produce high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU)
#40[deleted]