Editing Isotope separation (section)

==Enrichment cascades==
All large-scale isotope separation schemes employ a number of similar stages which produce successively higher concentrations of the desired isotope. Each stage enriches the product of the previous step further before being sent to the next stage. Similarly, the tailings from each stage are returned to the previous stage for further processing. This creates a sequential enriching system called a [[cascade (chemical engineering)|cascade]]. There are two important factors that characterize the performance of a cascade. The first is the [[separation factor]], which is a number greater than 1. The second is the number of required stages to get the desired purity.