0

As noted by Mr. Gremlin in this post: How is it possible to accelerate a neutron?

Crudely paraphrasing, subatomic particles with non-zero magnetic dipole moments interact with magnetic fields to give a non-zero potential energy. Such effects may be used to trap neutrons in a magnetic bottle using their magnetic dipole moments.

As noted by https://www.nndc.bnl.gov/nndc/stone_moments/nuclear-moments.pdf

Uranium-238 has a g-factor of 0.37, which is to be further multiplied by uranium-238's angular momentum to derive its practically zero magnetic dipole moment, contrasted to uranium-235's significant and non-zero magnetic dipole moment.

If such, could ultracold magnetic traps be utilized upon a pure uranium metal powder in vacuum to trap only uranium-235, while not being able to trap uranium-238?

Young Jun Lee
  • 307

1 Answers1

1

In principle yes: One can enrich elements with magnetic traps. Even other traps are in principle feasible to enrich elements (Magneto-optical traps).

HOWEVER (this is a big however!) typically, magnetic traps can trap only very few atoms (e.g. ~10^8 for rubidium).

Trapping 10^8 uranium atoms (which is very hard) corresponds to ~40 femto-gramm! Let's say, you can trap these atoms in 1s, you would need 792.7 million years to enrich 1kg of uranium.

kai90
  • 741