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Author: g0177325 🐝  😊 😞
Number: of 48447 
Subject: Centrifuges?
Date: 06/26/2025 9:37 AM
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Stupid question: why the hell are tens of thousands of centrifuges needed to enrich uranium?

The answer appears to be that only extremely high speed centrifuges can accomplish it, and those have to be small or else the forces would be too great. And so you need a lot of them to get any significant quantity.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zippe-type_centrifug...
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Author: onepoorguy 🐝  😊 😞
Number: of 137 
Subject: Re: Centrifuges?
Date: 06/26/2025 1:55 PM
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I'm not a nuclear physicist (my area was astronomical gamma rays), but I believe that is basically correct. Remember that uranium (U) is very heavy. Heavier than lead. If you have a large radius centrifuge, the angular momentum will be enormous spinning at tens of thousands of RPMs. You'd have to reinforce the thing greatly (impractically?) for it not to fly apart.

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