I asked the supplier that specific question. If we wanted to run our experiment with an enrichment of 62Ni, would it be cheaper to buy the lesser enriched Ni or buy a smaller amount of 96% and dilute it. The answer came back plain and simple - the cheapest is to buy the smaller amount of 96% and dilute it as we want it. The reason is that a big part of the cost is the care that is needed in handling the nickel tetracarbonyl. Once they are setup to run the nickel tetracarbonyl through the centrifuge, the extra time in the centrifuge for concentration was a small effort compared to handling the nickel tetracarbonyl.
The MFMP plan is to run with about a 4x enrichment over natural Ni - not pure 62Ni. On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 6:58 PM, Jones Beene <[email protected]> wrote: > *From:* Bob Higgins > > MFMP intends to find out by purchasing some 96% enriched 62Ni to run in > a Parkhomov-like reactor. The cost to purchase 96% enriched 62Ni is > $11.30/mg (milligram)… > > Bob – the thought just occurred, assuming that 62Ni is the only active > isotope … and the others are neutral, then it is probably not wise to > look for high enrichment levels, especially in centrifugal process > enrichment. > > The reason is that the percentage enrichment per stage is higher in the > early stages than in the later stages, while the processing cost per stage i > s about the same. There is a fixed cost to liquefy the nickel, but that > is comparatively low. The depleted feedstock loss is minimized by going > to lower enrichment. > > For instance it could be possible to enrich by a factor of 10 – e.g. from > 3.6% to 36% in a few stages, but it requires exponentially more stages to > reach 96%, perhaps 50 stages with far more depleted feedstock. Thus, one > would be better off, cost-wise, in looking for the flexibility of getting the > enrichment at the lowest net cost for the exact enrichment level desired in > the end product, instead of getting a high enrichment and then diluting a > nearly pure isotope back down. > > Jones >
