Talk:Enriched uranium

I'm making an artical stub for the United States Enrichment Corpoation ( USEC ) that will link here.

Quinobi 20:14, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

SWU (separative work unit)

I am moving this topic to Isotope separation where I think it will make a bit more sense when one sees it in context. DV8 2XL 02:35, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

• Na, I decided not to and expanded it here. DV8 2XL 04:19, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

How can a material like "depleted" uranium, with same number of nucleons and all the same composition as U-238, of course still being U-238, suddenly become less radioactive whether or not U-235 has been extracted or enriched? This makes no sense because if the Uranium were to lose its unstable properties it would move down the decay chain to something else; what you have described is physically impossible. U-238 is U-238; probably you are following some pro-military mandate to claim uranium is something different than uranium. Don't be fooled into thinking depleted uranium is in any way depleted; because it's still uranium.

• The term depleted uranium means the stock has been depleted of all or most of its inventory of U-235. The term was not used in any other matter. DV8 2XL 00:39, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

• • Natural uranium is composed of U-238, U-235 and U-234. Depleted uranium has most of the U-235 and U-234 removed. Because of their shorter half lives, both of these are more radioactive than U-238. Even though U-234 is only 0.006% of natural uranium, its radioactivity is the same as the much larger amount of U-238. pstudier 17:41, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Weapons from enriched uranium

I have restored my recent edits about weapons, which were rudely removed with the edit summary "nonsence."

There are no sourced statements in this entire article, so faulting my edits on that basis is absurd.

However, if one needs a primer, one needs to search no further than wikiarticle critical mass. Here we learn that implosion and beryllium reflectors can allow assembly of a supercritical mass from an amount of material that would be subcritical as a bare sphere.

As for dirty bombs from 20% or less enriched uranium, U-235 having a 700 million year half-life, I guess you could make a dirt bomb from it. It just wouldn't kill anyone. You could also stuff a wad of paper into a straw and spit it at a tank, and call it an anti-tank weapon. Give Peace A Chance 17:40, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

That just doesn't belong in this article. See your discussion page. --DV8 2XL 17:53, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Then make your freakin edit summary state that you think it doesn't belong, not that it is "nonsence." Give Peace A Chance 18:20, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

You will still have to provide a reference - see the section at the bottom of the article for the citations for the rest of the topic. I will give you a few hours before removing your edits - but they will be removed, if not by me then the others who watch this page if you don't provide refs.--DV8 2XL 18:44, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

P.S. The dirty bomb statements don't belong here either, since it only applies to used fuel, not the enrichment process. --DV8 2XL 18:55, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

It seems these unsourced statements challenged above have been here since 2006. Since no sources have been added during these four years I strongly propose removing the statements as they are. Until then I'll add a simple [citation needed] for clarification Troed (talk) 15:22, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

I disagree strongly. The statements are essentially correct, and it should not be hard to find citations. It would be useful to add a figure showing bare critical mass as a function of enrichment. But if we deleted all statements that were uncited in this article, there would be precious little left. Evidently the dirty bomb statements have been removed, and it sounds like they were "nonsense." NPguy (talk) 02:52, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Well if there are any citations that easy to find I suggest adding them - it's not up to us to judge whether the info is correct or not. I do agree with your suggestion of an explanatory picture - but the opinion that an article, just because it's currently badly written, shouldn't uphold Wikipedia concepts like WP:OR and WP:RS is a bit harder to accept. Troed (talk) 22:42, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

There's not much in this article that is sourced, so there's no reason to pick on this section, particularly since it's not wrong. Here is a citation that supports the claims and has a nice graph to boot. NPguy (talk) 02:06, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm sourcing. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 02:16, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Now multiply sourced, including NPguy's one. FYI - RS doesn't require every statement in Wikipedia to be sourced. RS is an implementation policy for our core verifyability policy, aka WP:V. WP:V focuses on statements which are likely to be challenged:

This page in a nutshell: Any material challenged or likely to be challenged, and all quotations, must be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation.

Obviously, Troed brought a challenge. But for a number of years the statements weren't.

I am sort of curious where you were coming from in making the challenge, Troed. What did you think was inaccurate? What gave you the impression that it was likely to be inaccurate?

Obviously, not everyone's a uranium nuclear weapons design expert (cough) but the article here is using the same info widely available in the nonproliferation community, nuclear engineering community, NPT treaty and IAEA operating regulations / etc. I'm somewhat suprised that anyone who is interested in this would find it questionable...

You don't have to answer if you don't want to, but I am curious.

Thanks...

Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 02:37, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for sourcing, I have no opinions on the subject whatsoever myself and was seriously just looking for verification. The numbers on this page were used in a debate and I have a habit of wanting to verify information off Wikipedia by going to the listed sources. In this case there were none, and when there was an existing discussion on the talk page I got suspicious. This discussion and the conclusion is an excellent example of Wikipedia working as it should :) Rejoice. Troed (talk) 10:41, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Countries

Would be nice if someone could add a reference about which countries uses this technology. thks

Is this the place to express my surprise that North Korea doesn't seem to be referenced? I am not a specialist, just a general reader and am not too familiar with the system, so apologies if I am treading on any toes here. Dawright12 (talk) 11:55, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes. I have added a reference. NPguy (talk) 17:14, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Dead Link

It appears that the "Uranium enrichment (PDF, 651 KB)" link is dead. Can someone fix or remove this? ~Anon

LEU caption wrong, surely?

I don't believe the caption on the "Low-enriched uranium powder" photo is correct. Uranium oxide is that nice yellow colour, but LEU is a metal; that's just a bucket of yellowcake. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 13:46, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I fixed this. I also changed another photo caption from 'highly enriched uranium' to 'uranium metal. There is no visual difference in uranium metal regardless of isotopic composition. I didn't go any further, 'Enriched uranium' is not the place to go into chemical processing steps from oxide to metal. Murray Baker. --210.84.59.171 13:09, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

OK, but the HEU picture actually is of an HEU billet, so it is worth pointing that out in the HEU, even if it looks the same as regular uranium metal. Better to give more information than less. --Fastfission 13:50, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Redirect

"Enrichment of Uranium should redirect to this page. N i g h t F a l c o n 9 0 9 0 9' ^{T a l k} 18:14, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

• I disagree. I suggest that a separate article is needed on "Enrichment of uranium", starting with content that is currently in this article. --orlady 15:13, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Uranium enrichment as contributor to global warming?

Got a couple of claims here from anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott that "the [Department of Energy] and the EPA [will tell you] that, at the moment, the process of uranium enrichment for fuel for nuclear power releases huge quantities of CO2. ... Meanwhile, the enrichment of uranium is responsible for [over 90 percent] of the CFC-114 gas released into the air in the U.S. ... CFC gas is 10,000 to 20,000 times more potent as a global warmer and heat trapper than CO2." (brackets in original) -- http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2005/05/03/dicum-caldicott/ -- Can anybody confirm or deny these assertions? -- Writtenonsand 23:18, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Argentina

Argentina doesn't have an enriched uranium production at commercial levels. In fact, all Argentina's reactors are of CANDU type, using natural uranium as its fuel.Agre22 (talk) 14:51, 18 September 2008 (UTC)agre22

Argentina does have a safeguarded gaseous diffusion enrichment plant at Plicaniiyeu, which is shut down. NPguy (talk) 03:03, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Pilcaniyeu plant was reopened on 2010 [1] --Jor70 (talk) 03:46, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Enriched_uranium#Separation_of_Isotopes_by_Laser_Excitation_.28SILEX.29

Care should be taken with the information that a viable commercial process has been developed with respect to Enriched_uranium#Separation_of_Isotopes_by_Laser_Excitation_.28SILEX.29. The source, The New York Times is notorious for its close relationship with United States intelligence agencies. The source itself says that no independent verification is possible. User:Fred Bauder Talk 17:20, 21 August 2011 (UTC)