[BC] speaking of skin effect and Lorentz

[RichardBJohnson at comcast.net]

Something does not smell right when I read about nuclear energy. We hear about centrifuges and other machinery used to separate the various isotopes of various nuclear materials. About 15 years ago, Aviation Week and Space Technology ran an article about our government purchasing nuclear warheads from the former Soviet Union as part of the nuclear weapons stand-down. We were to extract plutonium and add it to our stockpile as a way of reducing the number of weapons that could possibly fall into the wrong hands. 

The Russians did not want us to see the internal workings of their "pits," the actual explosive devices. Therefore, we designed a system using hydrogen gas. It would be fed into the device and plutonium hydride would be formed. The plutonium would then be extracted from this gas, using a bed of heated uranium-238. This distillation process worked because, in AW&ST's words, "hydrogen has an affinity for plutonium that is over 2,000 times greater than uranium."

The cat was out of the bag. Plutonium can be extracted using purely chemical means. What other information has been withheld since the dawn of the nuclear age? It is likely that mass spectrometers and centrifuges, which extract isotopes one atom at a time, are probably obsolete. It is likely that a whole range of isotopes can be extracted the same way gasoline and other petroleum products are distilled in fractioning towers.

If I keep thinking about things like this, I will probably disappear or be found dead of a Poppy extract overdose. Poppies? Is that the reason why we are an Afghanistan? --Never mind!

Cheers,
Richard B. Johnson
Book: http://www.AbominableFirebug.com/

----- Original Message -----
From: "Chuck Lakaytis" <chuck at akpb.org>

If you read Richard Rhodes The Making of the Atomic Bomb, there is an 
interesting discussion of the Calutrons.  These were basically giant 
mass spectrometers to do U235 concentration.  When they were first 
turned on the magnetic field from the coils was so strong that they 
fractured the mounting bolts and moved the many ton devices several feet 
out of line!
[Snipped...]