page_title: Gaseous diffusion
hierarchical_section_title: Gaseous diffusion
caption_attribution_description: Infographic from 2018-2019 Information Digest, NUREG 1350, Volume 30. Published in August 2018. For More Information go to: &lt;a href="https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr1350/" rel="noreferrer nofollow"&gt;2018-2019 Information Digest&lt;/a&gt; Visit the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's website at &lt;a href="http://www.nrc.gov/" rel="noreferrer nofollow"&gt;www.nrc.gov/&lt;/a&gt;. Photo Usage Guidelines: &lt;a href="https://www.flickr.com/people/nrcgov/"&gt;www.flickr.com/people/nrcgov/&lt;/a&gt; Privacy Policy: &lt;a href="http://www.nrc.gov/site-help/privacy.html" rel="noreferrer nofollow"&gt;www.nrc.gov/site-help/privacy.html&lt;/a&gt;. For additional information, or to comment on this photo contact: &lt;a href="mailto:opa.resource@nrc.gov" rel="noreferrer nofollow"&gt;OPA Resource&lt;/a&gt;.
context_page_description: Gaseous diffusion is a technology used to produce enriched uranium by forcing gaseous uranium hexafluoride through semipermeable membranes. This produces a slight separation between the molecules containing uranium-235 and uranium-238. By use of a large cascade of many stages, high separations can be achieved. It was the first process to be developed that was capable of producing enriched uranium in industrially useful quantities, but is nowadays considered obsolete, having been superseded by the more-efficient gas centrifuge process.
  Gaseous diffusion was devised by Francis Simon and Nicholas Kurti at the Clarendon Laboratory in 1940, tasked by the MAUD Committee with finding a method for separating uranium-235 from uranium-238 in order to produce a bomb for the British Tube Alloys project. The prototype gaseous diffusion equipment itself was manufactured by Metropolitan-Vickers at Trafford Park, Manchester, at a cost of £150,000 for four units, for the M. S. Factory, Valley. This work was later transferred to the United States when the Tube Alloys project became subsumed by the later Manhattan Project.
context_section_description: Gaseous diffusion is a technology used to produce enriched uranium by forcing gaseous uranium hexafluoride (UF₆) through semipermeable membranes. This produces a slight separation between the molecules containing uranium-235 (²³⁵U) and uranium-238 (²³⁸U). By use of a large cascade of many stages, high separations can be achieved. It was the first process to be developed that was capable of producing enriched uranium in industrially useful quantities, but is nowadays considered obsolete, having been superseded by the more-efficient gas centrifuge process.
  Gaseous diffusion was devised by Francis Simon and Nicholas Kurti at the Clarendon Laboratory in 1940, tasked by the MAUD Committee with finding a method for separating uranium-235 from uranium-238 in order to produce a bomb for the British Tube Alloys project. The prototype gaseous diffusion equipment itself was manufactured by Metropolitan-Vickers (MetroVick) at Trafford Park, Manchester, at a cost of £150,000 for four units, for the M. S. Factory, Valley. This work was later transferred to the United States when the Tube Alloys project became subsumed by the later Manhattan Project.
caption: Gaseous diffusion uses semi-permeable membranes to separate enriched uranium
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