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U.S. recovery centrifuge project |
| Author： Date：2010-03-09 |
When the United States and Iraq as a result of Iran's uranium enrichment activities at a time when tension ---
Ohio Department of Energy a heavily guarded facility, a U.S. company to speed up the works is the construction of a giant centrifuges to produce nuclear fuel needed for uranium -235.
U.S. "Washington Post" reported that 23, if sufficient funds, which U.S. companies over the next 5 years to 11,500 centrifuges into production and sale of nuclear power plants around the world produced enriched uranium.
■ aborted
"Washington Post" reported that the company called USEC from the beginning of 1993 to take over a uranium enrichment program, the federal government is now dedicated Portsmouth on the floor of the Department of Energy facilities in the construction of a centrifuge. By the name of the "American centrifuge project," the plan called "miracle technology", the size of its centrifuges in the world, far more than Iran or to master nuclear technology to other countries. However, the plan is the most unique aspect of its "resurgence."
As early as 40 years ago, at the Tennessee Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory to determine on a giant centrifuge that the basic design. In the early 1980s, the federal Department of Energy in Portsmouth on the ground to build a giant special centrifuge uranium enrichment plant.
However, the plant has not yet operational, the nuclear industry will no longer be the economy, the sharp decline in demand for nuclear fuel. In 1985, although 1300 has completed the construction of centrifuges, the Government abolished the "American centrifuge project".
Since then, the plant will be a secret technology "to the grave."
"We have a feeling that one day, these centrifuges will be like Stonehenge in Britain," have been involved in the scheme of the University of Virginia Professor Houston Wood said, "People will come here to doubt, 'they thinking?'"
At the same time, the United States continues to produce enriched uranium in the old factory, the use of the name of a "gas diffusion" of technology, with the giant centrifuge technology, its low efficiency, a great power.
■ should be shipped rebirth
In 1999, USEC Inc. once again to "American Centrifuge Project" plans to put on the agenda, and began to recruit technical personnel, Oak Ridge National Laboratory experts retirement is one of them. With the help of his company received a lot of the old technical reports, computer programs, and centrifuge-related equipment.
"It's like once again to experience the same young," Waters said, "You almost have to pinch himself about, it is difficult to believe, how I can start this project?"
Today, the federal government dedicated Portsmouth on the ground has been abandoned factory have been put into use again, the original was out of the centrifuge-wide, is about to put in place a whole new set of equipment. These new more advanced centrifuges, including a hollow cylinder, 12 meters high, 0.6 meters in diameter, made of carbon fiber.
As for its speed, remains a secret. But outside experts said that the speed of the external walls of the cylinder can be more than 1,000 meters per hour, higher than the speed of sound. USEC plans in the next few months to build 240 such centrifuges, if we can attract more investors will be able to plant into full operation. The scheme is estimated to cost 2.3 billion. |