الفهرس يوجد فقط 14 صفحة متاحة للعرض العام
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المستخلص
Uranium enrichment represents an important and critical process in the nuclear fuel cycle.
It is the process in which the uranium isotope 235 is increased to any desired level either for peaceful use (nuclear fuel) or un-peaceful use (nuclear weapon).
Modern technology provided many techniques (alternatives) for the enrichment process.
These techniques depend on many aspects and facts (attributes). The alternatives are gaseous diffusion method, centrifugal method, laser isotope separation method, electromagnetic separation method, thermal diffusion method and plasma separation method; while the attributes may include capital cost, power consumption, design complexity, proliferation resistance, and environmental impact. Some of these attributes can be quantitatively assessed while others depend on expert judgments.
Selection of a specific enrichment technique is a complicated process since many technical and political factors influence the decision.
The present work demonstrates and evaluates all possible alternatives and attributes involved in the enrichment process. It is the main objective of the present work is to provide an evaluative tool for the optimization among the alternatives being addressed.
The mathematical model used for the optimization purpose is the Fuzzy multi attribute utility model. Fuzzy logic is a modern scientific method which can deal with optimization problems in a flexible manner and is considered as an extension to the conventional multi attribute utility model (MAUT). Fuzzy logic has been utilized through specifying linguistic
expressions which need to be defined.
Applying the fuzzy MAUT to the alternatives and attributes mentioned before, and performing some sensitivity analysis, it is possible to get the final decision on the optimization problem under consideration.
The findings and conclusions extracted from the present study can be summarized as:
• Gas centrifugal method is the best alternative of other isotope separation methods in uranium enrichment.
• Laser isotope separation has a promising future for uranium enrichment when
technical difficulties are solved.
• Gas diffusion method is the worst choice and it may diminish in the next decade.
• Other isotope separation processes have a good index for isotope separation 111 general, not in uranium enrichment process.