SCALING OF ROTATION AND ISOTOPE SEPARATION IN A VACUUM-ARC CENTRIFUGE

n recent efforts to enrich stable isotopes, a quasi-neutral, highly ionized column of magnetized plasma has been used. Rigid body rotation in such magnetized columns, sustained by the E ;Measurements of rotation frequency, ion temperature, plasma potential and ion density are described. These agree very well with the predictions of a multi-fluid model. Scaling of rotation frequency was established experimentally. Given this empirical scaling law, the fluid model predicts the scaling of the plasma potential and plasma column size. The scaling was experimentally verified.;Isotope separation was measured in collected samples from magnesium plasma columns. The measurements agreed well with the predicted separation. A parametric analysis of the separation in such vacuum-arcs is presented, for isotopes of practical interest. The energy cost of production of separated isotopes using a vacuum-arc centrifuge is compared to that using other currently used isotope separators.;This thesis describes the development of a vacuum-arc centrifuge, and experiments conducted with it. The centrifuge is a magnetized plasma column, 1.2 m long, 5 cm in diameter, with n...