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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Give Peace A Chance (talk | contribs) at 17:40, 19 April 2006. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

I'm making an artical stub for the United States Enrichment Corpoation ( USEC ) that will link here.

Quinobi 20:14, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

SWU (separative work unit)

I am moving this topic to Isotope separation where I think it will make a bit more sense when one sees it in context. DV8 2XL 02:35, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

• Na, I decided not to and expanded it here. DV8 2XL 04:19, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

How can a material like "depleted" uranium, with same number of nucleons and all the same composition as U-238, of course still being U-238, suddenly become less radioactive whether or not U-235 has been extracted or enriched? This makes no sense because if the Uranium were to lose its unstable properties it would move down the decay chain to something else; what you have described is physically impossible. U-238 is U-238; probably you are following some pro-military mandate to claim uranium is something different than uranium. Don't be fooled into thinking depleted uranium is in any way depleted; because it's still uranium.

• The term depleted uranium means the stock has been depleated of all or most of its inventory of U-235. The term was not used in any other matter. DV8 2XL 00:39, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

• • Natural uranium is composed of U-238, U-235 and U-234. Depleted uranium has most of the U-235 and U-234 removed. Because of their shorter half lives, both of these are more radioactive than U-238. Even though U-234 is only 0.006% of natural uranium, its radioactivity is the same as the much larger amount of U-238. pstudier 17:41, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Weapons from enriched uranium

I have restored my recent edits about weapons, which were rudely removed with the edit summary "nonsence."

There are no sourced statements in this entire article, so faulting my edits on that basis is absurd.

However, if one needs a primer, one needs to search no further than wikiarticle critical mass. Here we learn that implosion and beryllium reflectors can allow assembly of a supercritical mass from an amount of material that would be subcritical as a bare sphere.

As for dirty bombs from 20% or less enriched uranium, U-235 having a 700 million year half-life, I guess you could make a dirt bomb from it. It just wouldn't kill anyone. You could also stuff a wad of paper into a straw and spit it at a tank, and call it an anti-tank weapon. Give Peace A Chance 17:40, 19 April 2006 (UTC)