verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb

1. 1
   To blend highly-enriched uranium, typically from decommissioned nuclear weapons, with uranium containing a low concentration of fissile uranium-235 (slightly-enriched uranium, natural uranium, or depleted uranium) in order to convert it to low-enriched uranium suitable for use as fuel in standard power reactors but not usable for a fission bomb. transitive, usually

   "The facility has the capacity to downblend 5 tonnes of bomb-grade uranium per year."

Antonyms

All antonyms

enrich

Example

More examples

"The facility has the capacity to downblend 5 tonnes of bomb-grade uranium per year."

Etymology

Blend of down + blend.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.