Electromagnetic isotope separation enrichment process

The revelation that Iraq had been using the electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS) process for enriching came as a surprise to many people in the scientific community. It was not until the third inspection that the Iraqi authorities admitted to the existence of this program and described their activities in detail. 

The electromagnetic calutrons at Oak Ridge National Laboratory separate isotopes with the same atomic number, but different mass, to produce enriched stable isotopes. During this process, mixed isotope material is vaporised (heated) and then ionised. The ionised particles are accelerated, and their trajectories are bent by a magnetic field. The... 

Over the past 50 or more years, the nuclides of greatest industrial and/or military importance have been the heavy isotopes of hydrogen, H(D) and H(T), and in greatly reduced amount, Li and Li, B, C, and Samples of many other enriched isotopes, chiefly for medical or research use, have been or are available. Very often, these have been obtained by electromagnetic separation, a process which is too expensive for large-scale separations. 

Because of its use in the Manhattan Project, the details of the electromagnetic isotope enrichment process were highly classified. After the discontinuation of its use for enrichment of uranium, much of the related technology was declassified and made available to the rest of the world through conferences and technical publications. Many countries developed their own electromagnetic isotope enrichment capability, but much smaller in scale. While the individual separators were similar in size and design, the number of separators, and thus the total production capability, was much smaller. Russia pursued a course similar... 

The electromagnetic separation plant built during World War 11 at Oak Ridge, involved two types of calutrons, alpha and beta. The larger alpha calutrons were used for the enrichment of natural uranium, and the beta calutrons were used for the final separation of U from the pre-enriched alpha product. For the electromagnetic separation process, UO was converted into UCl [10026-10-5] with CCl. The UCl was fed into the calutron for separation. The calutron technique has been used to separate pure samples of and stable isotopes of many other elements. The Y-12 calutron... 

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