Chuck: this is all covered in the article i sent you offlist [***]. as i said earlier, i'll be happy to help you run the numbers offlist. Les
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Thursday or Friday I got something in the email queue that was so large it mostly filled up the /var/mail/mqueue directory, with the sendmail deamon issuing continuous warnings. I looked around and found a huge file 6 megabytes or so and deleted it to make my local sendmail happy.
That has to have been the article you sent. I briefly saw optonline.com as part of the offending address in sendmail's message.
So you have to re-send the article.
(Just got it, thanks).
Obviously, that's the end of my Sunday laying around after a bike ride, making black beans in the pressure cooker, with nuclear glow in the dark serranos and carcinogenic smoked bacon...hmm.
``Dirac then went on to derive the separation rate for an ideal (arbitrary type) centrifuge. it is equation (3) in the paper. it's units are SWU per unit time...''
Okay, just glancing through as I am printing it out, oh yes, this is more like it. Some concrete reality. Of course if Dirac did the math, that's certainly scary...
Just scanning through a first quick read:
``...Inserting the constants into the equation (equ 3, a different version of the separation factor equation given in Urenco), shows that the maximum output of 1m of rotor spinning at 300m/sec is only 2 kg SWU/yr. Thus more than 110,000 machines of this length and speed would be required to give the 220 tonnes of separative work for the small plant described above...''
I have to say, it is very nice to read the history that accompanies the technical detail here. Americans almost never do that. Maybe it's a British thing. The historical narrative gives the whole article a nice classical touch.
Many thanks.
Chuck