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In a fission nuclear reactor, uranium-238 can be used to generate plutonium-239, which itself can be used in a nuclear weapon or as a nuclear-reactor fuel supply. In a typical nuclear reactor, up to one-third of the generated power comes from the fission of 239 Pu, which is not supplied as a fuel to the reactor, but rather, produced from 238 U. [5] A certain amount of production of 239
The breakthrough with plutonium was by Bretscher and Norman Feather at the Cavendish Laboratory. They realised that a slow neutron reactor fuelled with uranium would theoretically produce substantial amounts of plutonium-239 as a by-product. This is because uranium-238 absorbs slow neutrons and forms a short-lived new isotope, uranium-239.
Enriched uranium is a type of uranium in which the percent composition of uranium-235 (written 235 U) has been increased through the process of isotope separation.Naturally occurring uranium is composed of three major isotopes: uranium-238 (238 U with 99.2732–99.2752% natural abundance), uranium-235 (235 U, 0.7198–0.7210%), and uranium-234 (234 U, 0.0049–0.0059%).
Uranium appears in nature primarily in two isotopes: uranium-238 and uranium-235. When the nucleus of uranium-235 absorbs a neutron, it undergoes nuclear fission, releasing energy and, on average, 2.5 neutrons. Because uranium-235 releases more neutrons than it absorbs, it can support a chain reaction and so is described as fissile. Uranium-238 ...
234 U occurs in natural uranium as an indirect decay product of uranium-238, but makes up only 55 parts per million of the uranium because its half-life of 245,500 years is only about 1/18,000 that of 238 U. The path of production of 234 U is this: 238 U alpha decays to thorium-234. Next, with a short half-life, 234 Th beta decays to ...
The three long-lived nuclides are uranium-238 (half-life 4.5 billion years), uranium-235 (half-life 700 million years) and thorium-232 (half-life 14 billion years). The fourth chain has no such long-lasting bottleneck nuclide near the top, so almost all of the nuclides in that chain have long since decayed down to just before the end: bismuth-209.
Uranium-238 is the most stable isotope of uranium, with a half-life of about 4.463 × 10 9 years, [7] roughly the age of the Earth. Uranium-238 is predominantly an alpha emitter, decaying to thorium-234. It ultimately decays through the uranium series, which has 18 members, into lead-206. [17]
This is the primary route for making plutonium, as 239 U can be made by neutron capture in uranium-238. [ 23 ] Uranium-237 and neptunium-239 are regarded as the leading hazardous radioisotopes in the first hour-to-week period following nuclear fallout from a nuclear detonation, with 239 Np dominating "the spectrum for several days."