Atomic vapor laser isotope separation

At present, extracting 235U from those sources is only economical up to a degree, leaving tons of 235U still contained in waste products.

The basic concept behind the AVLIS system is to selectively ionize the desired atoms in a vaporized source material.

The laser light causes the chosen electron to be photoexcited and thus ionize the atom, leaving it electrically charged.

Early work generally focused on electrons in the 16 micron band, which could be efficiently produced using CO2 lasers which were emerging in the late 1960s.

However, the transitions in this area were closely spaced which made it difficult to select due to Doppler broadening, requiring the vapor to be cooled with a complex expansion system.

[10][11] The history of AVLIS, as recorded in the open refereed literature, began in the early-mid 1970s in the former Soviet Union and the United States.

Tunable laser development for AVLIS, applicable to uranium, has also been reported from several countries including Pakistan (1974), Australia (1982-1984), France (1984), India (1994), and Japan (1996).