Bismuth phosphate process

Hanford's U Plant was the third plutonium processing canyon built at the Hanford Site. Because the B and T Plants could process sufficient plutonium, it became a training facility.

The bismuth-phosphate process was used to extract plutonium from irradiated uranium taken from nuclear reactors.[1][2] It was developed during World War II by Stanley G. Thompson, a chemist working for the Manhattan Project at the University of California, Berkeley. This process was used to produce plutonium at the Hanford Site. Plutonium was used in the atomic bomb that was used in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in August 1945. The process was superseded in the 1950s by the REDOX and PUREX processes.

  1. ^ US patent 2799553, Stanley G. Thompson and Glenn T. Seaborg, "Phosphate method for separation of radioactive elements" 
  2. ^ US patent 2785951, Stanley G. Thompson and Glenn T. Seaborg, "Bismuth Phosphate Method for the Separation of Plutonium from Aqueous Solutions"