A Glimpse of the SILEX Uranium Enrichment Process
A relatively new technology for enriching uranium known as “Separation of Isotopes by Laser Excitation” or SILEX is described in some fresh detail in a recent Los Alamos paper (pdf).
SILEX, developed in 1992 by Australian scientists, is the rarest of birds in U.S. classification policy: It is privately generated information that is nevertheless classified by the U.S. government.
Ordinarily, information must be owned or controlled by the government in order to be eligible for classification in the first place. But under the peculiar terms of the Atomic Energy Act, the government may impose classification on “all” information concerning nuclear weapons and related matters that has not been previously declassified.
Since the new SILEX technology has never been declassified, it is ipso facto classified, despite the fact that it was generated by private (and foreign) researchers. It is the only known case in which the Atomic Energy Act has been used in this constitutionally questionable manner. (See Secrecy News, 06/26/01).
Unclassified details of the SILEX process, which uses pulsed lasers to selectively excite uranium hexafluoride molecules containing uranium-235, are presented in “Enrichment Separative Capacity for SILEX” by John L. Lyman, Los Alamos National Laboratory, LA-UR-05-3786 (thanks to WT).
Most patient safety challenges are not really captured and there are not enough tools to empower clinicians to improve. Here are four proposals for improving patient safety that are worthy of attention and action.
The Trump administration has often cited consolidation as a path to efficiency. But history shows that USDA reorganizations have weakened, not strengthened, the agency’s capacity.
Grace Wickerson, the Federation of American Scientists’ Senior Manager, Climate and Health, today accepted a national recognition, the “Grist 50” award, bestowed by the editorial board of Grist, a nonprofit, independent media organization.
The bootcamp brought more than two dozen next-generation open-source practitioners from across the United States to Washington DC, where they participated in interactive modules, group discussions, and hands-on sleuthing.