ИСТИНА

An estimate of the amount of highly enriched 15N for the production of every 100 tons of dense nitride fuel for fast neutron reactors leads to a volume of this isotope that exceeds its current global production. The limited scale of obtaining 15N is due not to lack of need of it, but to ecological danger and high cost of applied technologies. The analysis of numerous methods for the concentrating of 15N, both used in industry and proposed for curry out research, draws attention to the low-temperature rectification of molecular nitrogen, which has significant advantages in comparison with technologies of production. From the point of view of creating a large-scale and environmentally friendly technology for concentrating 15N, the advantages of low-temperature rectification of N2 are: the use of only one working substance, molecular nitrogen; high performance equipment (distillation columns); the simplicity of the flow reflux - evaporation of liquid N2. Unfortunately, a number of these advantages are crossed out by a long accumulation time. Even at concentrating of 15N to 5% the time will be equal approximately 3 months, and up to 30% the time will increase up to two years. Overcoming this problem is the use of a starting module for concentrating 15N by the most high-performance Nitrox process for production of 15N in an amount equal to its the accumulation in cascades for large-scale production of 15N by low-temperature rectification of N2. The report considers the technological features of the combination of the starting module and large-scale production of 15N, as well as the main economic questions of such a combination