The American Gas Centrifuge Past, Present, and Future
The art of gas centrifugation was born in 1935 at the University of Virginia when Dr. Jesse Beams demonstrated experimentally the separation of chlorine isotopes using an ultra-high speed centrifuge. Dr. Beam’s experiment initiated work that created a rich history of scientific and engineering accomplishment in the United States in the art of isotope separation and even large scale biological separation by centrifugation. The early history of the gas centrifuge development was captured in a lecture and documented by Dr. Jesse Beams in 1975. Much of Dr. Beams lecture material is used in this paper up to the year 1960. Following work by Dr. Gernot Zippe at the University of Virginia between 1958 and 1960, the US government embarked on a centrifuge development program that ultimately led to the start of construction of the Gas Centrifuge Enrichment Plant in Piketon Ohio in the late 1970’s. The government program was abandoned in 1985 after investing in the construction of two of six planned process buildings, a complete supply chain for process and centrifuge parts, and the successful manufacture and brief operation of an initial complement of production machines that would have met 15 percent of the planned capacity of the constructed process buildings. A declining market for enriched uranium, a glut of uranium enrichment capacity worldwide, and the promise of a new laser based separation process factored in the decision to stop the government program. By the late 1990’s it had become evident that gas centrifugation held the best promise to produce enriched uranium at low cost. In1999, the United States Enrichment Corporation undertook an initiative to revive the best of the American centrifuge technology that had been abandoned fourteen years earlier. This is an exciting story and one that when complete will enable the United States to maintain its domestic supply and to be highly competitive in the world market for this important energy commodity. (auth)
- Research Organization:
- USEC, Inc. (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 912770
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-20031012-1
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 8. workshop on separation phenomena in liquids and gases (SPLG 2003), Oak Ridge, TN (US), 12-16 October 2003; Related Information: Conference CD published and sponsored by the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA (United States); Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN (United States); USEC, Bethesda, MD (United States); Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), Washington, DC (United States)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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