How Is Uranium Enriched?

[rangerrebew]

How Is Uranium Enriched?
By Stuart Fox and Laura Geggel | May 8, 2018 06:36pm ET



Now that President Donald Trump has pulled the United States out of the nuclear deal with Iran, people across the world are wondering if the Middle Eastern country will invest its energies in building a nuclear weapon.

But if Iran's leadership does decide to pursue an atomic bomb, how would researchers get enough uranium, the key ingredient?

https://www.livescience.com/6463-uranium-enriched.html

[Oceander]

Plutonium is frequently used in place of uranium (specifically, U-235, which is the explosive isotope of Uranium that's used in weapons).  U-235 is also exceedingly rare, so plutonium is often more available (relatively speaking).  Of course, one needs a reactor first to make plutonium, since it doesn't occur naturally.