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Strategies & Market Trends : Ride the Tiger with CD -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: toccodolce who wrote (229273)	6/13/2013 11:58:44 PM
From: hoov	2 Recommendations Recommended By Eva Merlot Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 314178

Those are reasonable standards to apply to purity. I think that ZEN can exceed 4N5, though. If a bench scale, preliminary test can hit 4N, I think they can improve from there, with some process optimization. I asked the company what was in that remaining 0.01%, and they didn't know, as that was not part of the test protocol. I was told that it was a darned good question, and I'm sure they're moving ahead from there. What I am most interested in is the potential for nuclear grade applications. Basic purity requirements are 99.97%. But there's also another purity criterion, known as equivalent boron concentration. There are some contaminants (boron is kind of the poster child) which absorb neutrons, and those elements are problematic if they're exposed to nuclear radiation. They not only absorb neutrons, they also become radioactive themselves. That's bad when you pull the graphite out of the reactor. So, they total up all the neutron absorbing contaminants, and express it as a boron equivalent concentration, which predicts how much of a problem they might face later on, if they put this graphite into a reactor. There are two nuclear standards for boron equivalency: 200 parts per million, and 500 ppm. Those equate to 99.9998% purity and 99.9995% purity, assuming that all the contaminant atoms are indeed neutron absorbers. But that's the worst case to consider. As I said, total purity only needs to be 99.97%, so it's assumed that the bulk of the contaminants are benign, in general, because that's normal. Oops. I've mis-state something, but I don't have time left to edit this. 200 ppp = 99.98, so I need to check my numbers. Otherwise, all is as I stated. Here's the thing. If ZEN can get to 6N purity, i.e. 99.9999%, it automatically passes the boron equivalency threshold at the same time. Even if all the contaminants are neutron absorbers, it's still is above the threshold concentration for boron equivalency. Now, there are other variables that apply to nuclear graphite, but I hear that the nuclear industry perked up its ears up, right away, when ZEN announced its purity results. The story is not yet finished, but the most difficult part for others might the easiest part for us. We'll see. Lar