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Thorium (90 Th) has seven naturally occurring isotopes but none are stable. One isotope, 232 Th, is relatively stable, with a half-life of 1.405×10 10 years, considerably longer than the age of the Earth, and even slightly longer than the generally accepted age of the universe.
Thorium-232 (232 Th) is the main naturally occurring isotope of thorium, with a relative abundance of 99.98%. It has a half life of 14.05 billion years, which makes it the longest-lived isotope of thorium. It decays by alpha decay to radium-228; its decay chain terminates at stable lead-208.
Two radiometric dating methods involve thorium isotopes: uranium–thorium dating, based on the decay of 234 U to 230 Th, and ionium–thorium dating, which measures the ratio of 232 Th to 230 Th. [e] These rely on the fact that 232 Th is a primordial radioisotope, but 230 Th only occurs as an intermediate decay product in the decay chain of ...
A sample of thorium. Thorium-based nuclear power generation is fueled primarily by the nuclear fission of the isotope uranium-233 produced from the fertile element thorium.A thorium fuel cycle can offer several potential advantages over a uranium fuel cycle [Note 1] —including the much greater abundance of thorium found on Earth, superior physical and nuclear fuel properties, and reduced ...
The thorium fuel cycle is a nuclear fuel cycle that uses an isotope of thorium, 232 Th, as the fertile material. In the reactor, 232 Th is transmuted into the fissile artificial uranium isotope 233 U which is the nuclear fuel. Unlike natural uranium, natural thorium contains only trace amounts of fissile material (such as 231 Th
This is a list of radioactive nuclides (sometimes also called isotopes), ordered by half-life from shortest to longest, in seconds, minutes, hours, days and years. Current methods make it difficult to measure half-lives between approximately 10 −19 and 10 −10 seconds.
Pages in category "Isotopes of thorium" ... Thorium-239 This page was last edited on 29 March 2013, at 11:09 (UTC). Text is available under the Creative ...
Martian thorium has also been mapped by 2001 Mars Odyssey. [7] 232 Th decays very slowly (its half-life is comparable to the age of the universe) but other thorium isotopes occur in the thorium and uranium decay chains. Most of these are short-lived and hence much more radioactive than 232 Th, though on a mass basis they are negligible.