A "bomb" (pressure vessel) containing uranium halide and sacrificial metal, probably magnesium, being lowered into a furnace
After the reaction, remnant slag coats the interior of a bomb.
A uranium metal "biscuit" from the reduction reaction
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Thorium is a chemical element. It has the symbol Th and atomic number 90. Thorium is a weakly radioactive light silver metal which tarnishes olive gray when it is exposed to air, forming thorium dioxide; it is moderately soft and malleable and has a high melting point. Thorium is an electropositive actinide whose chemistry is dominated by the +4 oxidation state; it is quite reactive and can ignite in air when finely divided.
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Uranium-233 is a fissile isotope of uranium that is bred from thorium-232 as part of the thorium fuel cycle. Uranium-233 was investigated for use in nuclear weapons and as a reactor fuel. It has been used successfully in experimental nuclear reactors and has been proposed for much wider use as a nuclear fuel. It has a half-life of 160,000 years.
The Fernald Feed Materials Production Center is a Superfund site located within Crosby Township in Hamilton County, Ohio, as well as Ross Township in Butler County, Ohio, in the United States. It was a uranium processing facility located near the rural town of New Baltimore, about 20 miles (32 km) northwest of Cincinnati, which fabricated uranium fuel cores for the U.S. nuclear weapons production complex from 1951 to 1989. During that time, the plant produced 170,000 metric tons uranium (MTU) of metal products and 35,000 MTU of intermediate compounds, such as uranium trioxide and uranium tetrafluoride.
The liquid fluoride thorium reactor is a type of molten salt reactor. LFTRs use the thorium fuel cycle with a fluoride-based molten (liquid) salt for fuel. In a typical design, the liquid is pumped between a critical core and an external heat exchanger where the heat is transferred to a nonradioactive secondary salt. The secondary salt then transfers its heat to a steam turbine or closed-cycle gas turbine.
The bismuth-phosphate process was used to extract plutonium from irradiated uranium taken from nuclear reactors. It was developed during World War II by Stanley G. Thompson, a chemist working for the Manhattan Project at the University of California, Berkeley. This process was used to produce plutonium at the Hanford Site. Plutonium was used in the atomic bomb that was used in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in August 1945. The process was superseded in the 1950s by the REDOX and PUREX processes.
Nuclear transmutation is the conversion of one chemical element or an isotope into another chemical element. Nuclear transmutation occurs in any process where the number of protons or neutrons in the nucleus of an atom is changed.
Thorium-based nuclear power generation is fueled primarily by the nuclear fission of the isotope uranium-233 produced from the fertile element thorium. A thorium fuel cycle can offer several potential advantages over a uranium fuel cycle—including the much greater abundance of thorium found on Earth, superior physical and nuclear fuel properties, and reduced nuclear waste production. One advantage of thorium fuel is its low weaponization potential. It is difficult to weaponize the uranium-233 that is bred in the reactor. Plutonium-239 is produced at much lower levels and can be consumed in thorium reactors.
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Harley A. Wilhelm was an American chemist who helped to establish the United States Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory at Iowa State University. His uranium extraction process helped make it possible for the Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bombs.
The Ames Project was a research and development project that was part of the larger Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bombs during World War II. It was founded by Frank Spedding from Iowa State College in Ames, Iowa as an offshoot of the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago devoted to chemistry and metallurgy, but became a separate project in its own right. The Ames Project developed the Ames Process, a method for preparing pure uranium metal that the Manhattan Project needed for its atomic bombs and nuclear reactors. Between 1942 and 1945, it produced over 1,000 short tons (910 t) of uranium metal. It also developed methods of preparing and casting thorium, cerium and beryllium. In October 1945 Iowa State College received the Army-Navy "E" Award for Excellence in Production, an award usually only given to industrial organizations. In 1947 it became the Ames Laboratory, a national laboratory under the Atomic Energy Commission.
Many compounds of thorium are known: this is because thorium and uranium are the most stable and accessible actinides and are the only actinides that can be studied safely and legally in bulk in a normal laboratory. As such, they have the best-known chemistry of the actinides, along with that of plutonium, as the self-heating and radiation from them is not enough to cause radiolysis of chemical bonds as it is for the other actinides. While the later actinides from americium onwards are predominantly trivalent and behave more similarly to the corresponding lanthanides, as one would expect from periodic trends, the early actinides up to plutonium have relativistically destabilised and hence delocalised 5f and 6d electrons that participate in chemistry in a similar way to the early transition metals of group 3 through 8: thus, all their valence electrons can participate in chemical reactions, although this is not common for neptunium and plutonium.
Zinaida Vasilyevna Yershova was a Soviet and Russian chemist, physicist and engineer. She spent her entire career working with radioactive elements and headed laboratories producing radioactive materials used mostly in the Soviet atomic bomb project and the Soviet space program.
References
- ↑ "Ames Laboratory and Uranium Production in World War II". American Chemical Society. Retrieved 2023-02-08.
- ↑ Frank H. Spedding, Harley A. Wilhelm, and Wayne H. Keller, "Production of uranium", U.S. Patent no. 2,830,894 (filed: 7 Nov. 1947; issued: 15 April 1958).
- ↑ H. Goldschmidt, "Verfahren zur Herstellung von Metallen oder Metalloiden oder Legierungen derselben" (Process for the production of metals or metalloids or alloys of the same), Deutsche Reichs Patent no. 96317 (13 March 1895).
- ↑ The Metal Thorium, Proceedings of the Conference on Thorium, Oct 11, 1956, American Society for Metals & US Atomic Energy Commission, H. Wilhem, Editor, 1958.
- ↑ 1972–1973 Ames Laboratory Highlights, Ames Laboratory, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, ERDA 0575.
- ↑ Huffine, C.; Williams, J. (1959-11-01). Refining and purification of rare-earth metals (Report). pp. AECU––4426, 4213369. doi:10.2172/4213369 . Retrieved 2022-01-06.
- ↑ A. H. Danne, Chapter 8: Metallothermic Preparation of Rare Earth Metals, The Rare Earths, F. H. Spedding & A. H. Daane (ed), John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 1961.
- ↑ "DOE Pulse". web.ornl.gov. Retrieved 2023-02-08.
