The failed Yellowcake Uranium caper.

[oneighty]

Tis many a slip between Yellowcake and the

big Flash- Boom- Death and Destruction Nuclear

explosion. I did a Google on Yellowcake Uranium.

According to information available there only five

countries are presently converting Yellowcake into usable Uranium.

USA, France, Canada, Russia, and the UK.

If this is true could Iraq even do that basic conversion?

Could India, Israel, N Korea, Pakistan, China?

Once converted it still is not weapons grade Uranium.

180

[Nlighten1]

1. Interesting...

anyone know more about the yellow cake?

[punpirate]

2. Iraq could do this easily, and had, I'm sure...

... based on the contents stored at Tuwaitha. Yellowcake is just a partially refined oxide of uranium ore. Reduction to uranium metal is a fairly simple manufacturing process.

You are correct, though--once converted, it's still just uranium metal, and requires further processing (the difficult part) to make either reactor fuel or weapon-grade fuel.

Cheers.

[displacedtexan]

3. can you....

do all that and deploy it in 45 minutes?

[comradebillyboy]

4. yellow cake is

uranium ore that has gone through the first stage of processing and has been converted to uranium dioxide, as i recall. of the uranium in yellow cake the ratio of u-235 to u-238 is less than 1:100. U-235 is the fissionable isotope of uranium. u-238 dont blow up. for reactor fuel the uranium must be enrisched to about 8% u-235. a hiroshima type fission bomb must be enriched to something like 95% u-235 to make a bomb. a sphere of u-235 of about 10-20 lbs is sufficient for a simple, but effective, bomb. enriching uranium and building a bomb from it requires a major industrial base (think of the manhatten project).

i imagine india, israel and china are capable of enrichment, although conversion of regular reactor fuel to plutonium is easier. korea and pakistan, i think, used commercial nuclear fuel (92% u238) and irradiated it with neutrons and converted the u-238 into plutonium 239 (pu-239) which is quite fissionable. it is separated from the uranium chemically (dont need an enrichment facility), and the pu is fabricated into two hemispheres ready for action.

some of the numbers may be a bit off as i did not check any of my nuclear fuel cycle refrences. by the way, before i became a school teacher i spent seven years working on cleaning up radioactive and hazardous waaste at a number of doe nuclear weapons complex facilities. real interesting work by the way

[Dudley_DUright]

5. Your facts are exactly correct comrade

It is not purifying ore to U metal that is difficult, but taking the Uranium and separating the U-235 from the U-238 that is very very difficult (since both are identical chemically, must use physical processes like diffusion or centrifuges with Uranium Hexafluoride gas). This is what the Manhattan project was all about.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

6. Thanks for the info folks!

Glad I read all the threads. I appreciate the education! :thumbsup:

[oneighty]

7. I am so glad

to be of service my very favorite NSMA. Yes we got some good info.

I am sure there is more!

Ed

[sandnsea]

8. Do the aluminum tubes fit in here somewhere?

Are those part of the centrifuges you use would use if they were actually the right ones?

[comradebillyboy]

9. i think that the centrifuge may use similar tubes, but

most stuff (iaea and un reports) i have seen indicates that the specific tubes in question were not suitable for centrifuge work, but were ideal for mortars or rocket launchers.

see now i am putting in all the weasle words