Enrichment

Terry

Terry

Line Up and Wait
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Terry
Hi Pilots,

I would like to learn the specifics of enriching uranium so I can understand what Iran is actually doing.

Is there a "Safe" website that would give me "General Information" on nuclear technology?

Is there a nonfiction book I can read?

Surely, there are college courses that deal with this.

Is it okay to search or Google this topic?

Curious but still paranoid. :)

Thanks,
Terry Warner
68 year old retired
 
1st thought: push red knob in.
 
There are a number of websites that have pretty clear and relatively easy information to digest. They are the U.S. DOE's (doe.gov); Nuclear Regulatory Commission (nrc.gov); Nuclear Energy Institute (nei.org); and the International Atomic Energy Agency (I can't recall their website right now easy to find on google).


Happy reading.
 
Enriching is nothing more than getting rid of anything other than the U-235 is the big pile of Uranium you start with. U-238 is fairly stable and fairly useless as a fuel or weapon. It is also a good neutron absorber and acts as a poison in the neutron life cycle in a Uranium fueled reactor. U-235 is stable enough for everyday handling, but can be forced to fission if you bombard it with thermal neutrons. It has a high cross section of absorption for thermal neutron and a low cross section of absorption for fast neutrons. This help make a Uranium fueled reactor controllable as thermal neutrons fast neutrons have to slow down to thermal neutrons before they can cause the next fission. The time that it takes for the fast neutrons to slow down is what make the reactor controllable. It is slow enough to allow the negative coeffecient of reactivity of water to control power with little to now outside action.

But what do I know. I have not worked in nuclear power in over 14 years...

But to answer your question, this might be a good place to start. It is right off of Oak Ridge National Laboratory's public website:
http://web.ornl.gov/~webworks/cpr/pres/104042.pdf
 
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