Added: Jul 26, 2008
From: NobamaforAmerica
Duration: 4:16
Ahmadinejad called the U.S. participation in the latest round of nuclear talks "a victory for Iran." In the past, the U.S. said it would join talks only if Iran suspends uranium enrichment first. "The presence of a U.S. representative ... was a victory for Iran, irrespective of the outcome. ... The U.S. condition was for Iran to suspend enrichment but they attended (the talks) without such a condition being met," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying in the state radio report. On Wednesday, Ahmadinejad praised the U.S. participation at the talks as a step toward recognizing Tehran's right to acquire nuclear technology. What is Uranium? -- Uranium is an element that is similar to iron. Like iron, you dig uranium ore out of the ground and then process it to extract the pure uranium from the ore. When you finish processing uranium ore, what you have is uranium oxide. Uranium oxide contains two types (or isotopes) of uranium: U-235 and U-238. U-235 is what you need if you want to make a bomb or fuel a nuclear power plant. But the uranium oxide from the mine is about 99 percent U-238. So you need to somehow separate the U-235 from the U-238 and increase the amount of U-235. The process of concentrating the U-235 is called enrichment, and centrifuges are a central part of the process. U-235 weighs slightly less than U-238. By exploiting this weight difference, you can separate the U-235 and the U-238. The first step is to react the uranium with hydrofluoric acid, an extremely powerful acid. After several steps, you create the gas uranium hexafluoride. Now that the uranium is in a gaseous form, it is easier to work with. You can put the gas into a centrifuge and spin it up. The centrifuge creates a force thousands of times more powerful than the force of gravity. Because the U-238 atoms are slightly heavier than the U-235 atoms, they tend to move out toward the walls of the centrifuge. The U-235 atoms tend to stay more toward the center of the centrifuge. Although it is only a slight difference in concentrations, when you extract the gas from the center of the centrifuge, it has slightly more U-235 than it did before. You place this slightly concentrated gas in another centrifuge and do the same thing. If you do this thousands of times, you can create a gas that is highly enriched in U-235. At a uranium enrichment plant, thousands of centrifuges are chained together in long cascades. At the end of a long chain of centrifuges, you have uranium hexafluoride gas containing a high concentration of U-235 atoms. The uranium hexafluoride gas needs to turn back into uranium metal. You do this by adding calcium. The calcium reacts with the fluoride to create a salt, and the pure uranium metal is left behind. With this highly concentrated U-235 metal, you can make a nuclear bomb.
Channel: People
Tags: ahmadinejad iran is islamic mahmoud president republic
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