Gas diffusion process

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

The articles gas diffusion processes and uranium enrichment overlap thematically. Help me to better differentiate or merge the articles (→  instructions ) . To do this, take part in the relevant redundancy discussion . Please remove this module only after the redundancy has been completely processed and do not forget to include the relevant entry on the redundancy discussion page{{ Done | 1 = ~~~~}}to mark. Neutronstar2 ( discussion ) 14:49, Aug 1, 2020 (CEST)

The gas diffusion process is a process for uranium enrichment . It is based on the fact that gas molecules of a substance , the mass of which varies due to different isotopes , diffuse at different speeds .

For this purpose, (gaseous) uranium hexafluoride (UF ₆ ) is placed in a chamber that is divided by a porous membrane . The pressure is higher on the side where the uranium hexafluoride is introduced than on the other. Light molecules (containing the lighter ²³⁵ U isotope) have a higher diffusion rate than heavier ones, so the light isotopes collect in the chamber at low pressure. Since the separation effect is very small, about 1000 such separation stages must be connected in series to form a so-called cascade for effective enrichment. Uranium hexafluoride is used because it already sublimes at 56 ° C and because fluorine only consists of a single isotope. The molecular mass therefore only depends on the uranium atom.

One of the largest gas diffusion plants for uranium enrichment is located in Paducah , USA.

See also

• Gas centrifuge