calutron
Sign in to savethumb|alt=A man stands in front of a C-shaped object twice his size.|An Alpha calutron tank removed from the magnet for recovery of uranium-235 thumb|alt=A large oval-shaped structure|Alpha I magnet, called the "Racetrack". The calutrons are located around the ring.
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16 sectionsContents
- Origins
- Research
- Design
- Construction
- Operations
- Postwar years
- Other countries
- Soviet Union and China
- United Kingdom
- Israel, Japan, and France
- India
- Iraq
- Notes
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thumb|alt=A man stands in front of a C-shaped object twice his size.|An Alpha calutron tank removed from the magnet for recovery of uranium-235 thumb|alt=A large oval-shaped structure|Alpha I magnet, called the "Racetrack". The calutrons are located around the ring.
A calutron is a mass spectrometer originally designed and used for separating the isotopes of uranium. It was developed by Ernest Lawrence during the Manhattan Project and was based on his earlier invention, the cyclotron. Its name was derived from California University Cyclotron, in tribute to Lawrence's institution, the University of California, where it was invented. Calutrons were used in the industrial-scale Y-12 uranium enrichment plant at the Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The enriched uranium produced was used in the Little Boy atomic bomb that was detonated over Hiroshima on 6 August 1945.