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Another challenge associated with the thorium fuel cycle is the comparatively long interval over which 232 Th breeds to 233 U. The half-life of 233 Pa is about 27 days, which is an order of magnitude longer than the half-life of 239 Np. As a result, substantial 233 Pa develops in thorium-based fuels. 233 Pa
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 ...
Experiments have been conducted with uranium-233 (the fissile material at the heart of the thorium fuel cycle). Neptunium-237 and some isotopes of americium might be usable, but it is not clear that this has ever been implemented.
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 . Thorium-232 is a fertile material ; it can capture a neutron to form thorium-233, which subsequently undergoes two successive beta decays to uranium-233 , which ...
or U-233) is a fissile isotope of uranium that is bred from thorium-232 as part of the thorium fuel cycle. Uranium-233 was investigated for use in nuclear weapons and as a reactor fuel. [2] It has been used successfully in experimental nuclear reactors and has been proposed for much wider use as a nuclear fuel. It has a half-life of 160,000 years.
Caesium-134 is found in spent nuclear fuel but is not produced by nuclear weapon explosions, as it is only formed by neutron capture on stable Cs-133, which is only produced by beta decay of Xe-133 with a half-life of 3 days. Cs-134 has a half-life of 2 years and may be a major source of gamma radiation in the first 20 years after discharge.
The remainder of the chain is quick; the longest half-lives in it are 5.75 years for radium-228 and 1.91 years for thorium-228, with all other half-lives totaling less than 15 days. [55] 232 Th is a fertile material able to absorb a neutron and undergo transmutation into the fissile nuclide uranium-233, which is the basis of the thorium fuel ...
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.