Calutron
A calutron is a mass spectrometer originally designed and used for separating the isotopes of uranium. It was developed by Ernest Lawrence during the Manhattan Project and was based on his earlier invention, the cyclotron. Calutrons were used in the industrial-scale Y-12 uranium enrichment plant at the Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Electromagnetic separation for uranium enrichment was abandoned in the post-war period in favor of the more complicated, but more efficient, gaseous diffusion method.
About Calutron in brief
A calutron is a mass spectrometer originally designed and used for separating the isotopes of uranium. It was developed by Ernest Lawrence during the Manhattan Project and was based on his earlier invention, the cyclotron. Its name was derived from California University Cyclotron, in tribute to Lawrence’s institution, the University of California, where it was invented. Calutrons were used in the industrial-scale Y-12 uranium enrichment plant at the Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The enriched uranium produced was used in Little Boy atomic bomb that was detonated over Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. Electromagnetic separation for uranium enrichment was abandoned in the post-war period in favor of the more complicated, but more efficient, gaseous diffusion method. The principle of electromagnetic separation is that charged ions are deflected by a magnetic field, and lighter ones are more deflected than heavy ones. The reason this method produced very low yields is that it was so low yields for this type of isotope separation, so it was used for the electromagnetic separation of uranium-235, which had a much higher yield than uranium-238. During World War II, calutrons. were developed to use this principle to obtain substantial quantities of high-purity uranium- 235, by taking advantage of the small mass difference between uranium isotopes. Some remained in use to produce isotopically enriched samples of naturally occurring elements for military, scientific and medical purposes.
Although most of theCalutrons of the. Manhattan Project were dismantled at the end of the war, some remained in. use to. produce isotopic enriched samples for military,. scientific andMedical purposes, such as uranium-241, which was used to make the atomic bomb, Little Boy, and other nuclear weapons such as the V-2 detonator. The U.S. had 72% uranium, 72% natural uranium, and 90% of natural uranium had a yield of 0.50% to 0.5%. The process that produced 90% uranium had passed over over 50 years, but the electromagnetic method was that which had been used over the years. The electromagnetic separation process was that while the mass-called electromagnetic separation was capable of separating isotopes, it was also low yields so the reason it was later used for this. process was the Gaseous Diffusion Process. The process was developed in 1934 by the Office of Scientific Research and Development, Section of the Scientific Development and Research, and later its American counterpart, the S.1 Section of S.R.D. and S.C.E. The method was developed to produce low-yield isotopes such as thorium, uranium-240, and plutonium. The mass of the ions can be calculated according to the strength of the field and the charge of the ion, and the mass of. the ions. can be. calculated using the strength. of the electromagnetic field and magnetic field. It is a type of sector mass Spectrometer, an instrument in which a sample is ionized and then accelerated by electric fields.
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This page is based on the article Calutron published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 01, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
