Isotope Separation - Enrichment Cascades

Enrichment Cascades

All large-scale isotope separation schemes employ a number of similar stages which produce successively higher concentrations of the desired isotope. Each stage enriches the product of the previous step further before being sent to the next stage. Similarly, the tailings from each stage are returned to the previous stage for further processing. This creates a sequential enriching system called a cascade.

There are two important factors that affect the performance of a cascade. The first is the separation factor (the square root of the mass ratio of the two isotopes), which is a number greater than 1. The second is the number of required stages to get the desired purity.