The Military Significance of Small Uranium Enrichment Facilities Fed with Low-Enrichment Uranium (Redacted)

Abstract

The main purpose of this Memorandum is to discuss the potential for the production of highly enriched uranium for weapons by small uranium enrichment facilities (in particular, gas centrifuge facilities) fed with commercially available slightly enriched uranium. If the feed is slightly enriched uranium, such as used for reactor fuel elements (2 to 4 percent uranium-235 content}, this production potential can be much higher, typically by a factor of 5, than when the feed material is natural uranium. In consequence, the time to produce a given amount of fissile material for weapons can be significantly reduced by making use of stocks of slightly enriched uranium.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 1969
Accession Number
ADA613260

Entities

People

  • V. Gilinsky
  • W. Hoehn

Organizations

  • RAND Corporation

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Counter WMD
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acquisition
  • Agreements
  • Air Force
  • Department Of Defense
  • Fissile Materials
  • Governments
  • Light Water Reactors
  • Materials Laboratories
  • Materials Processing
  • Nuclear Energy
  • Nuclear Fuels
  • Nuclear Materials
  • Nuclear Power Plants
  • Nuclear Reactors
  • Reactor Fuels
  • Storage
  • United States

Readers

  • Environmental Engineering.
  • Mathematics or Statistics
  • Nuclear Non-Proliferation and International Security