Gas centrifuge

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A cascade of gas centrifuges at a United States enrichment plant.

The gas centrifuge is a hyper-centrifuge used to produce enriched uranium. It requires far less energy to achieve the same separation than the older gaseous diffusion process, which has been largely replaced.

1 Enrichment process
2 Countries operating large cascades
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Enrichment process

The gas centrifuge uranium enrichment process uses a large number of rotating cylinders in series and parallel formations. Centrifuges are interconnected to form trains and cascades. In this process, uranium hexafluoride (UF₆) gas is placed in a cylinder and rotated at a high speed. This rotation creates a strong centrifugal force so that the heavier gas molecules, containing uranium-238 (U-238), move toward the outside of the cylinder and the lighter gas molecules, containing uranium-235 (U-235), collect closer to the center. The stream that is slightly enriched in U-235 is withdrawn and fed into the next higher stage, while the slightly depleted stream is recycled back into the next lower stage. Significantly more U-235 enrichment can be obtained from a single unit gas centrifuge than from a single unit gaseous diffusion stage.

[edit] Countries operating large cascades

Large cascades of gas centrifuges are operated by France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Netherlands, and China to produce enriched uranium both for domestic use and for export, and by Japan for domestic use. A demonstration gas centrifuge plant is being built at Piketon, Ohio in the United States by USEC for operation in 2005, and a full-size plant is planned for operation in 2010.

Pakistan's nuclear program developed the P1 and P2 centrifuges -- the first two centrifuges that Pakistan deployed in large numbers. The P1 centrifuge uses an aluminum rotor, and the P2 centrifuge uses a maraging steel rotor, which is stronger, spins faster, and therefore enriches more uranium per machine than the P1 centrifuge's aluminum rotor.

Recently Iran enriched uranium to 4.8% using a centrifuge cascade. In 1995 Iran also acquired drawings of the P-2 design. On 12 April 2006 President Ahmadinejad announced that Iranian scientists were conducting research on the P-2 centrifuges.

Recently the President of Pakistan allegedly revealed an account of how the country's top nuclear scientist, A.Q. Khan, had stolen diagrams of centrifuges while working at URENCO in Netherlands.