Isotope separation

Sorting atoms by mass shouldn't be a hard problem for advanced AP systems. Single molecules have already be weighted with tuning forks of todays (2014) technology. A question is how much throughput will be possible.

Methods for determining the mass:

• Tuning fork detuning
• deflection in E & B fields densly packed mass spectrometers (Wikipedia: [1])
• necessary centripetal force while spinning

Nuclear excitations can have low energies way below the mass equivalent of one whole nucleone. Thus there is the question how fine small high throughput mass detection sensors will resolve mass.

The capability of filtering for radioactive isotopes:

• is nice cleaning air when there's contaminatiion for whatever reason
• poses considerable security risks due to the emerging high level radiation sorces that can potentially arrive at a critical mass BOOM! The high dilutedness of natural radioactivity may make that unpractically long but there are easily accessible unnatural sources like thorium dioxide glasses.

Prime suspects for filtering is Radon - a noble gas. ¹⁴C and stuff from nuclear fission accidents like iodine-131, caesium-134 and caesium-137 accumulate in dust (?) they are easy to filter but harder to enrich.