A few hundred thousand dollars worth of tech replacing what used to be a massive industrial investment is amazing. And I thought enriching uranium is something that counties with nukes go to extreme lengths to make it not accessible.

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Legend2440 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>And I thought enriching uranium is something that counties with nukes go to extreme lengths to make it not accessible.

It's not that difficult from an engineering perspective, the tech is almost a century old. It's just that we will drop bombs on anyone who tries.

Nuclear nonproliferation relies on active enforcement.

	▲	colechristensen an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It's not difficult from a conceptual engineering perspective but it is difficult from an industrial scale perspective. It requires a tremendous amount of hardware and energy and precision equipment.
	▲	KennyBlanken an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Nuclear nonproliferation relies on surveillance/monitoring and statecraft. There are many, many steps before "drop bombs".

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john_strinlai 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>And I thought enriching uranium is something that counties with nukes go to extreme lengths to make it not accessible.

low-enrichment (~20%) is what's happening here.

the bad stuff, for nukes, is ~90% enrichment.

	▲	HPsquared 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's the same process either way, and the first few percent are the hardest (as it's super dilute so you need to handle a lot of material). It's much easier to go from 20% to 90%, than it is to get to 20%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separative_work_units