A HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE GAS CENTRIFUGE

The first successful experiments to separate isotopes by gas centrifuge were performed by Professor Jesse W. Beams at the University of Virginia in the mid 1930’s. The gas centrifuge process was part of the Manhattan Project during World War II, but the mechanical challenges proved to be intractable at that time. After the war, other countries began to report efforts to develop the gas centrifuge method for uranium enrichment. Dr. Gernot Zippe, who had been a flight instructor in the German Air Force during the war and taken prisoner by the Soviet Union after the war, was released in the mid 1950’s. During his time in the Soviet Union, he worked with Steenbeck on the development of gas centrifuges. Around 1957, he was contacted by the United States and eventually given a contract to work with Professor Beams at the University of Virginia with the goal of reproducing the work he did in the Soviet Union. This collaborative effort led to the United States Atomic Energy Commission undertaking a large classified project to produce a commercial gas centrifuge enrichment plant. Because he was not a US citizen, Zippe returned to Europe and worked to develop the gas centrifuge in a predecessor company to what eventually became URENCO, a very successful commercial venture. In 1974, Dr. A. Q. Khan, a Pakistani employee of URENCO in the Netherlands, was the source of the leak of the technology. In 1985, the U.S. Department of Energy terminated their gas centrifuge project. In this paper, the details of this history will be presented from an American perspectiv