With new technology, a nuclear bomb is becoming more accessible.
As the online publication Cnews.ru reported, scientists are seriously concerned that the previously classified information on uranium enrichment has been “made public”. This may have the potential for commercial proliferation and nuclear weapons.
A faster and cheaper technology for the production of nuclear fuel appeared on the market. The new technology will be commercialized by General Electric, which has successfully completed the tests, and will be used for the first time in the state of North Carolina, in the city of Wilmington, in the relevant nuclear industry.
This uranium enrichment technology is an isotope separation method using laser excitation (Silex). This technology was developed in 1992 by Australian company Silex. General Electric led further development in 2006 and obtained licensing and commercialization rights.
The technology is based on the principle of laser photoionization of uranium-235 atoms. A laser beam tuned to a special frequency, creating an electric charge on the atoms of uranium-235, passes through the uranium raw material. After that, the atoms really catch the electromagnetic trap and place on a metal plate. Silex is so classified that even test photographs of this installation are missing.
It should be noted that the development of such technologies has been actively pursued since the 60s of the last century by such countries as Russia, the USSR, Pakistan, India, China, Iraq, Japan and the United States. But then, even though this technology was promising and promised huge benefits, it was recognized as unpromising. It is all about compactness and consumption of less energy in comparison with traditional enrichment of uranium, with the help of gas centrifuges. That is, the plant, working on a new technology, it is possible to hide in a small bunker. As the governments of the developer countries feared, it is possible that "unreliable" governments and terrorist groups can use nuclear weapons.
Having received the permission to launch a pilot production in 2007 to study the future prospects of Silex technology, General Electric guarantees the non-disclosure of secret technology and introduces the highest security measures at its future enterprise. The company plans to build a full-scale commercial plant with an area of 5,5 per hectare, the production capacity of which will be able to provide forty-two nuclear reactors with fuel.
By launching the Silex plant, General Electric will be a pioneer in the nuclear industry for the full-scale laser enrichment of uranium hexafluoride (UF6).
The idea of the technology itself provides protection against its use in the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction. The fact is that for the manufacture of nuclear fuel, uranium raw materials must be enriched to 3-5 percent, while the content of the mass fraction of uranium in natural raw materials is only 0,75 percent. As a consequence, General Electric-enriched uranium-235 will not be suitable for the manufacture of the atomic bomb, where raw materials with 80-90% uranium-235 content are used.
But still, we should not forget that no methods have been developed to search and locate these enrichment facilities, which cannot ensure complete control over the proliferation of nuclear weapons. In this case, it is believed that Silex could potentially serve as a technology to build nuclear weapons.
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