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History. The UCOR process, developed by the Uranium Enrichment Corporation of South Africa, has been operated on a large pilot-plant scale at Valindaba, Union of South Africa. Partial information on the process, its separation factor and specific power demand, and its projected economics was given by Roux and Grant [R3]. The ingenious Helikon cascade technique developed for this process, in […]

In some stage processes, the heads and tails streams are separated in such a way that all portions of each stream have uniform composition. This occurs, for example, in a well-mixed electrolytic cell operated with steady flow of feed water and steady withdrawal of partially electrolyzed water. In other stage processes, the heads or tails stream may be withdrawn in […]

This type of cascade may have practical application in a Becker nozzle plant or centrifuge plant for producing low-enriched uranium, with individual stages operated at a cut of around Figure 12.26 is a schematic diagram of stage connections showing the nomenclature to be used in solving the enrichment equations for such a cascade. Olander [01] has solved the enrichment equations […]

Section 7.4 described the development in Canada [S8] of a catalyst for the deuterium exchange reaction between hydrogen and liquid water that is not inactivated when submerged in water.

Absorption spectrum of uranium metal vapor. The absorption spectrum of uranium metal vapor is very complex, with over 300,000 lines at visible wavelengths. However, many of these absorption lines are very sharp, with sufficient displacement between a 23aU absorption line and the MSU absorption line for the corresponding transition, and without overlap of the 23 line with the «’U line […]

The number of stages in an ideal cascade may be evaluated by a procedure similar to that used in deriving Eq. (12.72) for the minimum number of stages at total reflux. The result is In [yf(l ~xw)l( 1 — yp)xw] In ypQ. — xw)l( 1 —J’pfrK’]

Although water distillation is no longer used for primary concentration of deuterium because of its high energy consumption, the principal features of water distillation plants for this purpose will be described briefly because they illustrate isotope separation principles so well.

Pure gases. A typical diffusion barrier consists of a thin sheet of material perforated by a very large number of small holes of nearly uniform diameter. If the diameter of the holes and the thickness of the sheet are smaller than the mean free path of UF6 at the pressure upstream of the barrier, individual molecules of UF6 will flow […]

Although the isotopes of an element have very similar chemical properties, they behave as completely different substances in nuclear reactions. Consequently, the separation of isotopes of certain elements, notably 235 U from 238 U and deuterium from hydrogen, is of great importance in nuclear technology. The fact that isotopes of an element have such similar gross physical and chemical properties, […]

Figure 12.23 shows the nomenclature to be used in describing the operation of an isotope separation plant during the transient period in which it is approaching steady-state performance. Figure 12.24 represents qualitatively the way tails and product flow rates and compositions will change with time during this transient period. Compositions are represented by a scale linear in In [x/(l -*)].