[stboz]

Lab centrifuge? Gas centrifuge? What?

[Maceman]

Lab centrifuge? Gas centrifuge? What?

Gas centrifuge, I believe they said.

[ImphClinton]

Gas Centrifuge designed specifficaly for enriching uranium. It put them at least three years aheas of where they were back in 1991. They could have produced a bomb within three years with this equipment. Development was proceeding but only prototypes were produced to help keep the program secreat.

[July 4th]

Lab centrifuge? Gas centrifuge? What?

Probably not the tabletop kind that do about 6000 rpm...probably closer to the kind that look like washing machines and do about 50k.

[Technogeeb]

Lab centrifuge? Gas centrifuge? What?

Gas centrifuge. It is an easy way to isolate U235. What you do is convert your mined uranium oxide (U3O8, also known as "yellowcake") to uranium hexaflouride gas (there are a few steps in this, I can elaborate if you're interested). Then you spin this in the centrifuge. The gas with the heavier U238 concentrates on the outside, so when you tap the inner gas you get a higher concetration of U235 (fissile uranium). Do this a few more times, then convert the gas back to uranium metal and you get the U235 you need for reactors (or bombs, if enriched enough).