Consideration of a Laser Enrichment Module: Module Characteristics from the Viewpoint of Energy Consumption

摘要

Several problems are discussed for designing a simplified enrichment module based on Atomic Laser Isotope Separation Method, which involve the vaporization of metal, laser excitation, laser ionization and ion recovery. The conditions at which the consumed energy has the minimum value are obtained by calculating the specific energy consumption for producing unit amount of enriched products. It is found that there should be an appropriate relationship between the processing atomic density and the electrode gap in order to avoid the enrichment loss caused by the charge exchange during the ion recovery. Moreover, it is also found that this relation depends on the electrode length measured along both the atomic beam direction and the laser beam direction. (ERA citation 12:045079)