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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
Uranium-235 makes up about 0.72% of natural uranium. Unlike the predominant isotope uranium-238, it is fissile, i.e., it can sustain a fission chain reaction. It is the only fissile isotope that is a primordial nuclide or found in significant quantity in nature. Uranium-235 has a half-life of 703.8 million years.
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.
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]
The term isotopes (originally also isotopic elements, [4] now sometimes isotopic nuclides [5]) is intended to imply comparison (like synonyms or isomers). For example, the nuclides 12 6 C, 13 6 C, 14 6 C are isotopes (nuclides with the same atomic number but different mass numbers [6]), but 40 18 Ar, 40 19 K, 40 20 Ca are isobars (nuclides with ...
Uranium-238 (U-238 or 238 U), the most common isotope of uranium This page was last edited on 22 June 2021, at 14:51 (UTC). Text is available under the Creative ...
Moreover, different isotopes have different critical masses, and the critical mass for many radioactive isotopes is infinite, because the mode of decay of one atom cannot induce similar decay of more than one neighboring atom. For example, the critical mass of uranium-238 is infinite, while the critical masses of uranium-233 and uranium-235 are ...
A further 10 nuclides, platinum-190, samarium-147, lanthanum-138, rubidium-87, rhenium-187, lutetium-176, thorium-232, uranium-238, potassium-40, and uranium-235 have half-lives between 7.0 × 10 8 and 4.83 × 10 11 years, which means they have experienced at least 0.5% depletion since the formation of the Solar System about 4.6 × 10 9 years ...