mardi 2 septembre 2014

Separating Plutonium Isotopes via Laser?

So, I'm given to understand that the 1977 cessation of nuclear fuel reprocessing in the USA was based on the idea that plutonium might be harvested from spent fuel and used to make a bomb. Furthermore, I am given to understand that given the technology of the time, this was nonsense on stilts; there's too much plutonium 240 contamination.



Plutonium 240 is particularly effective at screwing up nuclear weapons cores because it undergoes spontaneous fission, so it's very good at causing "fizzles." Furthermore, because the mass ratios of plutonium 240 and plutonium 239 are so close; much closer than uranium 235 and uranium 238, it's quite difficult to enrich commercial reactor plutonium using centrifuges or gasseous diffusion.



But enrichment technology marches on. Laser-based methods are on the horizon. I don't claim to understand laser-based enrichment methods that well, because they sound like magic to me, but my understanding is that because a laser emits a beam of light where every photon is exactly the same frequency, it is possible to tune a laser precisely enough that it ionizes only the desired isotope. Therefore, unless I misunderstand it, which is possible, laser-based enrichment doesn't rely on isotope mass ratios. It's basically 100% selective.



So, would it be possible to separate plutonium 240 and plutonium 239 using laser-based enrichment?





via JREF Forum http://ift.tt/1pGF9kd

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