First and foremost I am investor, I like to get ahead of the game, I have been successful at that, it's not always all about what a company tells shareholders sometimes it's about what they don't say, if you can look at something and see the bigger picture it can give you an edge.
Yes you are correct in saying that LIBS is used for analysis, by itself it doesn't enrich anything.
Having said that, it would seem it is a very handy tool for analyzing REE in UNF.
The US has a shortage of REE, most of it comes from China and also lack enough Uranium235 for fuel manufacture.
The US only has one source of REE there atm, and Lynas process that!
Do you not think that the US could use more REE?
From the link I posted it says -: Rare earth elements are a major component of these fission products,
The US are looking very closely at using UNF and recycling it, GEH are looking at AI, do you think it possible that LIBS would play some part in analyzing the REE content in recycled UNF and other elements in the UNF to see how much of it was there? from what they say it has to be removed before any fuel can be made from the recovered energy components of UNF?
Ytterbium (Yb) 176 you would think is one of those REE's, it is also an element, Silex tech can be used to enrich more than Uranium as can be seen by the enrichment of Si28.
If Silex technology could be used to recover and enrich ytterbium (Yb) 176?
Then don't you think that would be handy? I reckon they could also recover other REE's in UNF and enrich them as well, but if the Silex tech is used for enrichment of the Uranium235 component in the UNF and they can recover and enrich the ytterbium (Yb) 176 it will still need to be irradiated to make it into lutetium, I do think that an ideal place to irradiate it would be in a nuclear reactor, where will the recovered U235 be going, yes back into a reactor, isn't that a nice synergy?
But the LIBS would be mandatory to make sure all of the REE is all removed before turning it back into a re-uasble fuel going by what they say?
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