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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.
The island of stability is a hypothetical region in the top right cluster of nuclides that contains isotopes far more stable than other transuranic elements. There are no stable nuclides having an equal number of protons and neutrons in their nuclei with atomic number greater than 20 (i.e. calcium) as can be readily observed from the chart ...
Plutonium-238 is potentially more efficient isotope for nuclear reactors, since it has smaller critical mass than uranium-235, but it continues to release much thermal energy (0.56 W/g) [111] [119] by decay even when the fission chain reaction is stopped by control rods. Its application is limited by its high price (about US$1000/g).
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]
For other isotopes, the isotopic mass is usually within 0.1 u of the mass number. For example, 35 Cl (17 protons and 18 neutrons) has a mass number of 35 and an isotopic mass of 34.96885. [ 7 ] The difference of the actual isotopic mass minus the mass number of an atom is known as the mass excess , [ 8 ] which for 35 Cl is –0.03115.
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 ...