0

As noted by Mr. Gremlin in this post: How is it possible to accelerate a neutron?

Crudely paraphrasing, subatomic particles with non-zero magnetic dipole moments interact with magnetic fields to give a non-zero potential energy. Such effects may be used to trap neutrons in a magnetic bottle using their magnetic dipole moments.

As noted by https://www.nndc.bnl.gov/nndc/stone_moments/nuclear-moments.pdf

Uranium-238 has a g-factor of 0.37, which is to be further multiplied by uranium-238's angular momentum to derive its practically zero magnetic dipole moment, contrasted to uranium-235's significant and non-zero magnetic dipole moment.

If such, could ultracold magnetic traps be utilized upon a pure uranium metal powder in vacuum to trap only uranium-235, while not being able to trap uranium-238?

Young Jun Lee
  • 293
  • 1
    Vapor (individual atoms/ions), not powder (many atoms together) ? – Jon Custer Mar 27 '24 at 15:09
  • @JonCuster Sorry, my bad. – Young Jun Lee Mar 27 '24 at 15:16
  • @JonCuster Also, do you think this may be viable? – Young Jun Lee Mar 27 '24 at 16:42
  • 1
    Can you do something to separate atoms based on magnetic dipole? Yes you can. Is it viable in an engineering sense compared with other demonstrated separation methods? No, it is not. – Jon Custer Mar 27 '24 at 16:59
  • @JonCuster Well, I am asking this because I remember reading about some Harvard Graduate student stopping research related to this due to it enabling covert enrichment of uranium, and thereby, nuclear proliferation. I am guessing something clicked when they made the prototype, or maybe they were just paranoid. – Young Jun Lee Mar 27 '24 at 17:21
  • @JonCuster Also, I don't care about energy or efficiency. As for the equipment... Well, aren't they already trapping neutrons? – Young Jun Lee Mar 27 '24 at 18:04

1 Answers1

1

In principle yes: One can enrich elements with magnetic traps. Even other traps are in principle feasible to enrich elements (Magneto-optical traps).

HOWEVER (this is a big however!) typically, magnetic traps can trap only very few atoms (e.g. ~10^8 for rubidium).

Trapping 10^8 uranium atoms (which is very hard) corresponds to ~40 femto-gramm! Let's say, you can trap these atoms in 1s, you would need 792.7 million years to enrich 1kg of uranium.

kai90
  • 618