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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Soda Ant, post: 3818907, member: 13460&quot;]Not quite. One of the methods used to separate U235 that used used in the Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima from natural uranium (mostly U238) was electromagnetic separation. This technique used large machines called Calutrons (invented by Ernest Lawrence and named after the University of California), which were essentially gigantic mass spectrometers that used huge electromagnets. This was done on an industrial scale at Oakridge in Tennessee and each Calutron needed many tons of copper for the magnet windings. Since copper was in short supply during the war, the Treasury was approached for a loan of silver to make these windings (silver is more conductive than copper, so it&#039;s an ideal substitute).</p><p><br /></p><p>When the representative of the Manhattan Project made the request of 6000 <i>tons </i>of silver to an undersecretary of the Treasury, he reportedly replied (paraphrased) &quot;Sir! We do not measure silver in <i>tons</i>; our measure is the Troy ounce!&quot;. In all, 430 million Troy ounces of silver were used for this purpose during the war and it was returned to the treasury afterwards (electromagnetic separation of U235 was replaced by gaseous diffusion separation after the war).[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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