British technology transfer to China in zirconium reactor development

Mentioned in passing as "another story we can get into sometime, about how the British tried to fool the Chinese and the Chinese snookered them, by developing a better technology." Not developed in this lecture.

The zirconium has to be very pure and almost no hafnium, because hafnium and zirconium are right above each other on the periodic table, and hafnium has a fairly high neutron absorption. So you have to have hafnium-free zirconium for nuclear service. The other use of zirconium is for making acetic acid. I told you tantalum is what we use for sulfuric acid. For acetic acid, they make reactors out of zirconium. If you want to learn how to weld a titanium submarine — titanium and zirconium are right below each other on the periodic table. The people down in Texas City, Texas, where they make huge acetic acid plants, build zirconium reactors to make their acetic acid. If you go over to China, they've also learned how to build their own zirconium reactors. That's another story we can get into sometime, about how the British tried to fool the Chinese and the Chinese snookered them, by developing a better technology.