wilmington / paducah plants?, page-2

nubps, Christopher White has stated on several occasions now that the Paducah enrichment plant will be different to the Wilmington enrichment Plant.

I don't know whether anybody else here noticed, but ever since Paducah came into the picture, the DoE ORNL gets a mention in any releases pertaining to Paducah, the reason I believe that is happening is because ORNL have been developing prototypes for GLE, what sort of prototypes would that be? because as far as I was aware all of the prototypes necessary for a Uranium enrichment plant developed by Silex had already been achieved and were done by SILEX either at Lucas Heights,or when they were at USEC or at Wilmington, it was only after they hinted that they would apply for the enrichment at Paducah that ORNL prototypes were ever discussed as far as I can remember.

We do know that Paducah will only enrich to natural grade from the tails, which is different to what will happen at Wilmington normally, when they use natural grade UF6 as feedstock , but I believe they could also enrich tails at Wilmington as well, it would be much the same as underfeeding I believe, so I reckon there is something else that is different at Paducah somehow, something that needed these prototypes from ORNL, possibly related to safety issues with handling different material?

I believe they have been testing the prototype stuff for Paducah at the Wilmiongton plant in the last six months or so, I suppose you could call that the Phase Two for Paducah as in the last announcement? this is why we have seen the delay at starting Phase three for Wilmington in my opinion.

It will still be around six years until a plant at Paducah could be built IMHO, but Wilmington could be running in as little as 18 months possibly, I believe they could transport tails to Wilmington, but not from Paducah, I believe they will come from other sites like Pikerton or ORNL and like I said it would be similar to underfeeding the enrichment plant at Wilmington and the enrichment for the tails will still be to natural grade at Wilmington also if what I say is correct?