What's the half-life of uranium?

In nature, uranium is found as uranium-238 (99.2739–99.2752%), uranium-235 (0.7198–0.7202%), and a very small amount of uranium-234 (0.0050–0.0059%). Uranium decays slowly by emitting an alpha particle. The half-life of uranium-238 is about 4.47 billion years and that of uranium-235 is 704 million years, making them useful in dating the age of the Earth.

Uranium

Uranium is a chemical element with symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium is weakly radioactive because all isotopes of uranium are unstable, with half-lives varying between 159,200 years and 4.5 billion years. The most common isotopes in natural uranium are uranium-238 (which has 146 neutrons and accounts for over 99%) and uranium-235 (which has 143 neutrons). Uranium has the highest atomic weight of the primordially occurring elements. Its density is about 70% higher than that of lead, and slightly lower than that of gold or tungsten. It occurs naturally in low concentrations of a few parts per million in soil, rock and water, and is commercially extracted from uranium-bearing minerals such as uraninite.

Many contemporary uses of uranium exploit its unique nuclear properties. Uranium-235 is the only naturally occurring fissile isotope, which makes it widely used in nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons. However, because of the tiny amounts found in nature, uranium needs to undergo enrichment so that enough uranium-235 is present. Uranium-238 is fissionable by fast neutrons, and is fertile, meaning it can be transmuted to fissile plutonium-239 in a nuclear reactor. Another fissile isotope, uranium-233, can be produced from natural thorium and is also important in nuclear technology. Uranium-238 has a small probability for spontaneous fission or even induced fission with fast neutrons; uranium-235 and to a lesser degree uranium-233 have a much higher fission cross-section for slow neutrons. In sufficient concentration, these isotopes maintain a sustained nuclear chain reaction. This generates the heat in nuclear power reactors, and produces the fissile material for nuclear weapons. Depleted uranium (U) is used in kinetic energy penetrators and armor plating. Uranium is used as a colorant in uranium glass, producing lemon yellow to green colors. Uranium glass fluoresces green in ultraviolet light. It was also used for tinting and shading in early photography.

The 1789 discovery of uranium in the mineral pitchblende is credited to Martin Heinrich Klaproth, who named the new element after the recently discovered planet Uranus. Eugène-Melchior Péligot was the first person to isolate the metal and its radioactive properties were discovered in 1896 by Henri Becquerel. Research by Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner, Enrico Fermi and others, such as J. Robert Oppenheimer starting in 1934 led to its use as a fuel in the nuclear power industry and in "Little Boy", the first nuclear weapon used in war. An ensuing arms race during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union produced tens of thousands of nuclear weapons that used uranium metal and uranium-derived plutonium-239. The security of those weapons and their fissile material following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 is an ongoing concern for public health and safety. See Nuclear proliferation.

When refined, uranium is a silvery white, weakly radioactive metal. It has a Mohs hardness of 6, sufficient to scratch glass and approximately equal to that of titanium, rhodium, manganese and niobium. It is malleable, ductile, slightly paramagnetic, strongly electropositive and a poor electrical conductor. Uranium metal has a very high density of 19.1 g/cm, denser than lead (11.3 g/cm), but slightly less dense than tungsten and gold (19.3 g/cm).

Uranium metal reacts with almost all non-metal elements (with the exception of the noble gases) and their compounds, with reactivity increasing with temperature. Hydrochloric and nitric acids dissolve uranium, but non-oxidizing acids other than hydrochloric acid attack the element very slowly. When finely divided, it can react with cold water; in air, uranium metal becomes coated with a dark layer of uranium oxide. Uranium in ores is extracted chemically and converted into uranium dioxide or other chemical forms usable in industry.

Uranium-235 was the first isotope that was found to be fissile. Other naturally occurring isotopes are fissionable, but not fissile. On bombardment with slow neutrons, its uranium-235 isotope will most of the time divide into two smaller nuclei, releasing nuclear binding energy and more neutrons. If too many of these neutrons are absorbed by other uranium-235 nuclei, a nuclear chain reaction occurs that results in a burst of heat or (in special circumstances) an explosion. In a nuclear reactor, such a chain reaction is slowed and controlled by a neutron poison, absorbing some of the free neutrons. Such neutron absorbent materials are often part of reactor control rods (see nuclear reactor physics for a description of this process of reactor control).

As little as 15 lb (7 kg) of uranium-235 can be used to make an atomic bomb. The first nuclear bomb used in war, "Little Boy", relied on uranium fission, but the very first nuclear explosive (the "Gadget" used at Trinity) and the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki ("Fat Man") were both plutonium bombs.

Uranium metal has three allotropic forms:

The major application of uranium in the military sector is in high-density penetrators. This ammunition consists of depleted uranium (DU) alloyed with 1–2% other elements, such as titanium or molybdenum. At high impact speed, the density, hardness, and pyrophoricity of the projectile enable the destruction of heavily armored targets. Tank armor and other removable vehicle armor can also be hardened with depleted uranium plates. The use of depleted uranium became politically and environmentally contentious after the use of such munitions by the US, UK and other countries during wars in the Persian Gulf and the Balkans raised questions concerning uranium compounds left in the soil (see Gulf War Syndrome).

Depleted uranium is also used as a shielding material in some containers used to store and transport radioactive materials. While the metal itself is radioactive, its high density makes it more effective than lead in halting radiation from strong sources such as radium. Other uses of depleted uranium include counterweights for aircraft control surfaces, as ballast for missile re-entry vehicles and as a shielding material. Due to its high density, this material is found in inertial guidance systems and in gyroscopic compasses. Depleted uranium is preferred over similarly dense metals due to its ability to be easily machined and cast as well as its relatively low cost. The main risk of exposure to depleted uranium is chemical poisoning by uranium oxide rather than radioactivity (uranium being only a weak alpha emitter).

During the later stages of World War II, the entire Cold War, and to a lesser extent afterwards, uranium-235 has been used as the fissile explosive material to produce nuclear weapons. Initially, two major types of fission bombs were built: a relatively simple device that uses uranium-235 and a more complicated mechanism that uses plutonium-239 derived from uranium-238. Later, a much more complicated and far more powerful type of fission/fusion bomb (thermonuclear weapon) was built, that uses a plutonium-based device to cause a mixture of tritium and deuterium to undergo nuclear fusion. Such bombs are jacketed in a non-fissile (unenriched) uranium case, and they derive more than half their power from the fission of this material by fast neutrons from the nuclear fusion process.

The main use of uranium in the civilian sector is to fuel nuclear power plants. One kilogram of uranium-235 can theoretically produce about 20 terajoules of energy (2 joules), assuming complete fission; as much energy as 1500 tonnes of coal.

Commercial nuclear power plants use fuel that is typically enriched to around 3% uranium-235. The CANDU and Magnox designs are the only commercial reactors capable of using unenriched uranium fuel. Fuel used for United States Navy reactors is typically highly enriched in uranium-235 (the exact values are classified). In a breeder reactor, uranium-238 can also be converted into plutonium through the following reaction:

Before (and, occasionally, after) the discovery of radioactivity, uranium was primarily used in small amounts for yellow glass and pottery glazes, such as uranium glass and in Fiestaware.

The discovery and isolation of radium in uranium ore (pitchblende) by Marie Curie sparked the development of uranium mining to extract the radium, which was used to make glow-in-the-dark paints for clock and aircraft dials. This left a prodigious quantity of uranium as a waste product, since it takes three tonnes of uranium to extract one gram of radium. This waste product was diverted to the glazing industry, making uranium glazes very inexpensive and abundant. Besides the pottery glazes, uranium tile glazes accounted for the bulk of the use, including common bathroom and kitchen tiles which can be produced in green, yellow, mauve, black, blue, red and other colors.
Uranium was also used in photographic chemicals (especially uranium nitrate as a toner), in lamp filaments for stage lighting bulbs, to improve the appearance of dentures, and in the leather and wood industries for stains and dyes. Uranium salts are mordants of silk or wool. Uranyl acetate and uranyl formate are used as electron-dense "stains" in transmission electron microscopy, to increase the contrast of biological specimens in ultrathin sections and in negative staining of viruses, isolated cell organelles and macromolecules.

The discovery of the radioactivity of uranium ushered in additional scientific and practical uses of the element. The long half-life of the isotope uranium-238 (4.51 years) makes it well-suited for use in estimating the age of the earliest igneous rocks and for other types of radiometric dating, including uranium–thorium dating, uranium–lead dating and uranium–uranium dating. Uranium metal is used for X-ray targets in the making of high-energy X-rays.

The use of uranium in its natural oxide form dates back to at least the year 79 CE, when it was used to add a yellow color to ceramic glazes. Yellow glass with 1% uranium oxide was found in a Roman villa on Cape Posillipo in the Bay of Naples, Italy, by R. T. Gunther of the University of Oxford in 1912. Starting in the late Middle Ages, pitchblende was extracted from the Habsburg silver mines in Joachimsthal, Bohemia (now Jáchymov in the Czech Republic), and was used as a coloring agent in the local glassmaking industry. In the early 19th century, the world's only known sources of uranium ore were these mines.

The discovery of the element is credited to the German chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth. While he was working in his experimental laboratory in Berlin in 1789, Klaproth was able to precipitate a yellow compound (likely sodium diuranate) by dissolving pitchblende in nitric acid and neutralizing the solution with sodium hydroxide. Klaproth assumed the yellow substance was the oxide of a yet-undiscovered element and heated it with charcoal to obtain a black powder, which he thought was the newly discovered metal itself (in fact, that powder was an oxide of uranium). He named the newly discovered element after the planet Uranus (named after the primordial Greek god of the sky), which had been discovered eight years earlier by William Herschel.

In 1841, Eugène-Melchior Péligot, Professor of Analytical Chemistry at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (Central School of Arts and Manufactures) in Paris, isolated the first sample of uranium metal by heating uranium tetrachloride with potassium.

Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity by using uranium in 1896. Becquerel made the discovery in Paris by leaving a sample of a uranium salt, KUO(SO) (potassium uranyl sulfate), on top of an unexposed photographic plate in a drawer and noting that the plate had become "fogged". He determined that a form of invisible light or rays emitted by uranium had exposed the plate.

A team led by Enrico Fermi in 1934 observed that bombarding uranium with neutrons produces the emission of beta rays (electrons or positrons from the elements produced; see beta particle). The fission products were at first mistaken for new elements with atomic numbers 93 and 94, which the Dean of the Faculty of Rome, Orso Mario Corbino, christened "ausonium" and "hesperium", respectively. The experiments leading to the discovery of uranium's ability to fission (break apart) into lighter elements and release binding energy were conducted by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in Hahn's laboratory in Berlin. Lise Meitner and her nephew, the physicist Otto Robert Frisch, published the physical explanation in February 1939 and named the process "nuclear fission". Soon after, Fermi hypothesized that the fission of uranium might release enough neutrons to sustain a fission reaction. Confirmation of this hypothesis came in 1939, and later work found that on average about 2.5 neutrons are released by each fission of the rare uranium isotope uranium-235. Fermi urged Alfred O. C. Nier to separate uranium isotopes for determination of the fissile component, and on February 29, 1940, Nier used an instrument he built at the University of Minnesota to separate the world's first uranium-235 sample in the Tate Laboratory. After mailed to Columbia University's cyclotron, John Dunning confirmed the sample to be the isolated fissile material on March 1. Further work found that the far more common uranium-238 isotope can be transmuted into plutonium, which, like uranium-235, is also fissile by thermal neutrons. These discoveries led numerous countries to begin working on the development of nuclear weapons and nuclear power.

On 2 December 1942, as part of the Manhattan Project, another team led by Enrico Fermi was able to initiate the first artificial self-sustained nuclear chain reaction, Chicago Pile-1. An initial plan using enriched uranium-235 was abandoned as it was as yet unavailable in sufficient quantities. Working in a lab below the stands of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago, the team created the conditions needed for such a reaction by piling together 400 short tons (360 metric tons) of graphite, 58 short tons (53 metric tons) of uranium oxide, and six short tons (5.5 metric tons) of uranium metal, a majority of which was supplied by Westinghouse Lamp Plant in a makeshift production process.

Two major types of atomic bombs were developed by the United States during World War II: a uranium-based device (codenamed "Little Boy") whose fissile material was highly enriched uranium, and a plutonium-based device (see Trinity test and "Fat Man") whose plutonium was derived from uranium-238. The uranium-based Little Boy device became the first nuclear weapon used in war when it was detonated over the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. Exploding with a yield equivalent to 12,500 tonnes of TNT, the blast and thermal wave of the bomb destroyed nearly 50,000 buildings and killed approximately 75,000 people (see Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki). Initially it was believed that uranium was relatively rare, and that nuclear proliferation could be avoided by simply buying up all known uranium stocks, but within a decade large deposits of it were discovered in many places around the world.

The X-10 Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, formerly known as the Clinton Pile and X-10 Pile, was the world's second artificial nuclear reactor (after Enrico Fermi's Chicago Pile) and was the first reactor designed and built for continuous operation. Argonne National Laboratory's Experimental Breeder Reactor I, located at the Atomic Energy Commission's National Reactor Testing Station near Arco, Idaho, became the first nuclear reactor to create electricity on 20 December 1951. Initially, four 150-watt light bulbs were lit by the reactor, but improvements eventually enabled it to power the whole facility (later, the town of Arco became the first in the world to have all its electricity come from nuclear power generated by BORAX-III, another reactor designed and operated by Argonne National Laboratory). The world's first commercial scale nuclear power station, Obninsk in the Soviet Union, began generation with its reactor AM-1 on 27 June 1954. Other early nuclear power plants were Calder Hall in England, which began generation on 17 October 1956, and the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania, which began on 26 May 1958. Nuclear power was used for the first time for propulsion by a submarine, the USS "Nautilus", in 1954.

In 1972, the French physicist Francis Perrin discovered fifteen ancient and no longer active natural nuclear fission reactors in three separate ore deposits at the Oklo mine in Gabon, West Africa, collectively known as the Oklo Fossil Reactors. The ore deposit is 1.7 billion years old; then, uranium-235 constituted about 3% of the total uranium on Earth. This is high enough to permit a sustained nuclear fission chain reaction to occur, provided other supporting conditions exist. The capacity of the surrounding sediment to contain the nuclear waste products has been cited by the U.S. federal government as supporting evidence for the feasibility to store spent nuclear fuel at the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.

Above-ground nuclear tests by the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1950s and early 1960s and by France into the 1970s and 1980s spread a significant amount of fallout from uranium daughter isotopes around the world. Additional fallout and pollution occurred from several nuclear accidents.

Uranium miners have a higher incidence of cancer. An excess risk of lung cancer among Navajo uranium miners, for example, has been documented and linked to their occupation. The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, a 1990 law in the US, required $100,000 in "compassion payments" to uranium miners diagnosed with cancer or other respiratory ailments.

During the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, huge stockpiles of uranium were amassed and tens of thousands of nuclear weapons were created using enriched uranium and plutonium made from uranium. Since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, an estimated 600 short tons (540 metric tons) of highly enriched weapons grade uranium (enough to make 40,000 nuclear warheads) have been stored in often inadequately guarded facilities in the Russian Federation and several other former Soviet states. Police in Asia, Europe, and South America on at least 16 occasions from 1993 to 2005 have intercepted shipments of smuggled bomb-grade uranium or plutonium, most of which was from ex-Soviet sources. From 1993 to 2005 the Material Protection, Control, and Accounting Program, operated by the federal government of the United States, spent approximately US $550 million to help safeguard uranium and plutonium stockpiles in Russia. This money was used for improvements and security enhancements at research and storage facilities. "Scientific American" reported in February 2006 that in some of the facilities security consisted of chain link fences which were in severe states of disrepair. According to an interview from the article, one facility had been storing samples of enriched (weapons grade) uranium in a broom closet before the improvement project; another had been keeping track of its stock of nuclear warheads using index cards kept in a shoe box.

Along with all elements having atomic weights higher than that of iron, uranium is only naturally formed in supernovae. Primordial thorium and uranium are only produced in the r-process (rapid neutron capture), because the s-process (slow neutron capture) is too slow and cannot pass the gap of instability after bismuth. Besides the two extant primordial uranium isotopes, U and U, the r-process also produced significant quantities of U, which has a shorter half-life and has long since decayed completely to Th, which was itself enriched by the decay of Pu, accounting for the observed higher-than-expected abundance of thorium and lower-than-expected abundance of uranium. While the natural abundance of uranium has been supplemented by the decay of extinct Pu (half-life 0.375 million years) and Cm (half-life 16 million years), producing U and U respectively, this occurred to an almost negligible extent due to the shorter half-lives of these parents and their lower production than U and Pu, the parents of thorium: the Cm:U ratio at the formation of the Solar System was.

Uranium is a naturally occurring element that can be found in low levels within all rock, soil, and water. Uranium is the 51st element in order of abundance in the Earth's crust. Uranium is also the highest-numbered element to be found naturally in significant quantities on Earth and is almost always found combined with other elements. The decay of uranium, thorium, and potassium-40 in the Earth's mantle is thought to be the main source of heat that keeps the outer core liquid and drives mantle convection, which in turn drives plate tectonics.

Uranium's average concentration in the Earth's crust is (depending on the reference) 2 to 4 parts per million, or about 40 times as abundant as silver. The Earth's crust from the surface to 25 km (15 mi) down is calculated to contain 10 kg (2 lb) of uranium while the oceans may contain 10 kg (2 lb). The concentration of uranium in soil ranges from 0.7 to 11 parts per million (up to 15 parts per million in farmland soil due to use of phosphate fertilizers), and its concentration in sea water is 3 parts per billion.

Uranium is more plentiful than antimony, tin, cadmium, mercury, or silver, and it is about as abundant as arsenic or molybdenum. Uranium is found in hundreds of minerals, including uraninite (the most common uranium ore), carnotite, autunite, uranophane, torbernite, and coffinite. Significant concentrations of uranium occur in some substances such as phosphate rock deposits, and minerals such as lignite, and monazite sands in uranium-rich ores (it is recovered commercially from sources with as little as 0.1% uranium).

Other organisms, such as the lichen "Trapelia involuta" or microorganisms such as the bacterium "Citrobacter", can absorb concentrations of uranium that are up to 300 times the level of their environment. "Citrobacter" species absorb uranyl ions when given glycerol phosphate (or other similar organic phosphates). After one day, one gram of bacteria can encrust themselves with nine grams of uranyl phosphate crystals; this creates the possibility that these organisms could be used in bioremediation to decontaminate uranium-polluted water.
The proteobacterium "Geobacter" has also been shown to bioremediate uranium in ground water. The mycorrhizal fungus Glomus intraradices increases uranium content in the roots of its symbiotic plant.

In nature, uranium(VI) forms highly soluble carbonate complexes at alkaline pH. This leads to an increase in mobility and availability of uranium to groundwater and soil from nuclear wastes which leads to health hazards. However, it is difficult to precipitate uranium as phosphate in the presence of excess carbonate at alkaline pH. A "Sphingomonas" sp. strain BSAR-1 has been found to express a high activity alkaline phosphatase (PhoK) that has been applied for bioprecipitation of uranium as uranyl phosphate species from alkaline solutions. The precipitation ability was enhanced by overexpressing PhoK protein in "E. coli".

Plants absorb some uranium from soil. Dry weight concentrations of uranium in plants range from 5 to 60 parts per billion, and ash from burnt wood can have concentrations up to 4 parts per million. Dry weight concentrations of uranium in food plants are typically lower with one to two micrograms per day ingested through the food people eat.

Worldwide production of UO (yellowcake) in 2013 amounted to 70,015 tonnes, of which 22,451 t (32%) was mined in Kazakhstan. Other important uranium mining countries are Canada (9,331 t), Australia (6,350 t), Niger (4,518 t), Namibia (4,323 t) and Russia (3,135 t).

Uranium ore is mined in several ways: by open pit, underground, in-situ leaching, and borehole mining (see uranium mining). Low-grade uranium ore mined typically contains 0.01 to 0.25% uranium oxides. Extensive measures must be employed to extract the metal from its ore. High-grade ores found in Athabasca Basin deposits in Saskatchewan, Canada can contain up to 23% uranium oxides on average. Uranium ore is crushed and rendered into a fine powder and then leached with either an acid or alkali. The leachate is subjected to one of several sequences of precipitation, solvent extraction, and ion exchange. The resulting mixture, called yellowcake, contains at least 75% uranium oxides UO. Yellowcake is then calcined to remove impurities from the milling process before refining and conversion.

Commercial-grade uranium can be produced through the reduction of uranium halides with alkali or alkaline earth metals. Uranium metal can also be prepared through electrolysis of or
, dissolved in molten calcium chloride () and sodium chloride (NaCl) solution. Very pure uranium is produced through the thermal decomposition of uranium halides on a hot filament.

It is estimated that 5.5 million tonnes of uranium exists in ore reserves that are economically viable at US$59 per lb of uranium, while 35 million tonnes are classed as mineral resources (reasonable prospects for eventual economic extraction). Prices went from about $10/lb in May 2003 to $138/lb in July 2007. This has caused a big increase in spending on exploration, with US$200 million being spent worldwide in 2005, a 54% increase on the previous year. This trend continued through 2006, when expenditure on exploration rocketed to over $774 million, an increase of over 250% compared to 2004. The OECD Nuclear Energy Agency said exploration figures for 2007 would likely match those for 2006.

Australia has 31% of the world's known uranium ore reserves and the world's largest single uranium deposit, located at the Olympic Dam Mine in South Australia. There is a significant reserve of uranium
in Bakouma a sub-prefecture in the prefecture of Mbomou in Central African Republic.

Some nuclear fuel comes from nuclear weapons being dismantled, such as from the Megatons to Megawatts Program.

An additional 4.6 billion tonnes of uranium are estimated to be in sea water (Japanese scientists in the 1980s showed that extraction of uranium from sea water using ion exchangers was technically feasible). There have been experiments to extract uranium from sea water, but the yield has been low due to the carbonate present in the water. In 2012, ORNL researchers announced the successful development of a new absorbent material dubbed HiCap which performs surface retention of solid or gas molecules, atoms or ions and also effectively removes toxic metals from water, according to results verified by researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

In 2005, seventeen countries produced concentrated uranium oxides: Canada (27.9% of world production), Australia (22.8%), Kazakhstan (10.5%), Russia (8.0%), Namibia (7.5%), Niger (7.4%), Uzbekistan (5.5%), the United States (2.5%), Argentina (2.1%), Ukraine (1.9%) and China (1.7%). Kazakhstan continues to increase production and may have become the world's largest producer of uranium by 2009 with an expected production of 12,826 tonnes, compared to Canada with 11,100 t and Australia with 9,430 t. In the late 1960s, UN geologists also discovered major uranium deposits and other rare mineral reserves in Somalia. The find was the largest of its kind, with industry experts estimating the deposits at over 25% of the world's then known uranium reserves of 800,000 tons.

The ultimate available supply is believed to be sufficient for at least the next 85 years, although some studies indicate underinvestment in the late twentieth century may produce supply problems in the 21st century.
Uranium deposits seem to be log-normal distributed. There is a 300-fold increase in the amount of uranium recoverable for each tenfold decrease in ore grade.
In other words, there is little high grade ore and proportionately much more low grade ore available.

Calcined uranium yellowcake, as produced in many large mills, contains a distribution of uranium oxidation species in various forms ranging from most oxidized to least oxidized. Particles with short residence times in a calciner will generally be less oxidized than those with long retention times or particles recovered in the stack scrubber. Uranium content is usually referenced to, which dates to the days of the Manhattan Project when was used as an analytical chemistry reporting standard.

Phase relationships in the uranium-oxygen system are complex. The most important oxidation states of uranium are uranium(IV) and uranium(VI), and their two corresponding oxides are, respectively, uranium dioxide () and uranium trioxide (). Other uranium oxides such as uranium monoxide (UO), diuranium pentoxide (), and uranium peroxide () also exist.

The most common forms of uranium oxide are triuranium octoxide () and. Both oxide forms are solids that have low solubility in water and are relatively stable over a wide range of environmental conditions. Triuranium octoxide is (depending on conditions) the most stable compound of uranium and is the form most commonly found in nature. Uranium dioxide is the form in which uranium is most commonly used as a nuclear reactor fuel. At ambient temperatures, will gradually convert to. Because of their stability, uranium oxides are generally considered the preferred chemical form for storage or disposal.

Salts of many oxidation states of uranium are water-soluble and may be studied in aqueous solutions. The most common ionic forms are (brown-red), (green), (unstable), and (yellow), for U(III), U(IV), U(V), and U(VI), respectively. A few solid and semi-metallic compounds such as UO and US exist for the formal oxidation state uranium(II), but no simple ions are known to exist in solution for that state. Ions of liberate hydrogen from water and are therefore considered to be highly unstable. The ion represents the uranium(VI) state and is known to form compounds such as uranyl carbonate, uranyl chloride and uranyl sulfate. also forms complexes with various organic chelating agents, the most commonly encountered of which is uranyl acetate.

Unlike the uranyl salts of uranium and polyatomic ion uranium-oxide cationic forms, the uranates, salts containing a polyatomic uranium-oxide anion, are generally not water-soluble.

The interactions of carbonate anions with uranium(VI) cause the Pourbaix diagram to change greatly when the medium is changed from water to a carbonate containing solution. While the vast majority of carbonates are insoluble in water (students are often taught that all carbonates other than those of alkali metals are insoluble in water), uranium carbonates are often soluble in water. This is because a U(VI) cation is able to bind two terminal oxides and three or more carbonates to form anionic complexes.

The uranium fraction diagrams in the presence of carbonate illustrate this further: when the pH of a uranium(VI) solution increases, the uranium is converted to a hydrated uranium oxide hydroxide and at high pHs it becomes an anionic hydroxide complex.

When carbonate is added, uranium is converted to a series of carbonate complexes if the pH is increased. One effect of these reactions is increased solubility of uranium in the pH range 6 to 8, a fact that has a direct bearing on the long term stability of spent uranium dioxide nuclear fuels.

Uranium metal heated to reacts with hydrogen to form uranium hydride. Even higher temperatures will reversibly remove the hydrogen. This property makes uranium hydrides convenient starting materials to create reactive uranium powder along with various uranium carbide, nitride, and halide compounds. Two crystal modifications of uranium hydride exist: an α form that is obtained at low temperatures and a β form that is created when the formation temperature is above 250 °C.

Uranium carbides and uranium nitrides are both relatively inert semimetallic compounds that are minimally soluble in acids, react with water, and can ignite in air to form. Carbides of uranium include uranium monocarbide (UC), uranium dicarbide (), and diuranium tricarbide (). Both UC and are formed by adding carbon to molten uranium or by exposing the metal to carbon monoxide at high temperatures. Stable below 1800 °C, is prepared by subjecting a heated mixture of UC and to mechanical stress. Uranium nitrides obtained by direct exposure of the metal to nitrogen include uranium mononitride (UN), uranium dinitride (), and diuranium trinitride ().

All uranium fluorides are created using uranium tetrafluoride (); itself is prepared by hydrofluorination of uranium dioxide. Reduction of with hydrogen at 1000 °C produces uranium trifluoride (). Under the right conditions of temperature and pressure, the reaction of solid with gaseous uranium hexafluoride () can form the intermediate fluorides of,, and.

At room temperatures, has a high vapor pressure, making it useful in the gaseous diffusion process to separate the rare uranium-235 from the common uranium-238 isotope. This compound can be prepared from uranium dioxide and uranium hydride by the following process:

The resulting, a white solid, is highly reactive (by fluorination), easily sublimes (emitting a vapor that behaves as a nearly ideal gas), and is the most volatile compound of uranium known to exist.

One method of preparing uranium tetrachloride () is to directly combine chlorine with either uranium metal or uranium hydride. The reduction of by hydrogen produces uranium trichloride () while the higher chlorides of uranium are prepared by reaction with additional chlorine. All uranium chlorides react with water and air.

Bromides and iodides of uranium are formed by direct reaction of, respectively, bromine and iodine with uranium or by adding to those element's acids. Known examples include:,,, and. Uranium oxyhalides are water-soluble and include,,, and. Stability of the oxyhalides decrease as the atomic weight of the component halide increases.

Natural uranium consists of three major isotopes: uranium-238 (99.28% natural abundance), uranium-235 (0.71%), and uranium-234 (0.0054%). All three are radioactive, emitting alpha particles, with the exception that all three of these isotopes have small probabilities of undergoing spontaneous fission, rather than alpha emission. There are also five other trace isotopes: uranium-239, which is formed when U undergoes spontaneous fission, releasing neutrons that are captured by another U atom; uranium-237, which is formed when U captures a neutron but emits two more, which then decays to neptunium-237; and finally, uranium-233, which is formed in the decay chain of that neptunium-237. It is also expected that thorium-232 should be able to undergo double beta decay, which would produce uranium-232, but this has not yet been observed experimentally.

Uranium-238 is the most stable isotope of uranium, with a half-life of about 4.468 years, roughly the age of the Earth. Uranium-235 has a half-life of about 7.13 years, and uranium-234 has a half-life of about 2.48 years.
For natural uranium, about 49% of its alpha rays are emitted by each of U atom, and also 49% by U (since the latter is formed from the former) and about 2.0% of them by the U. When the Earth was young, probably about one-fifth of its uranium was uranium-235, but the percentage of U was probably much lower than this.

Uranium-238 is usually an α emitter (occasionally, it undergoes spontaneous fission), decaying through the uranium series, which has 18 members, into lead-206, by a variety of different decay paths.

The decay chain of U, which is called the actinium series, has 15 members and eventually decays into lead-207. The constant rates of decay in these decay series makes the comparison of the ratios of parent to daughter elements useful in radiometric dating.

Uranium-234, which is a member of the uranium series (the decay chain of uranium-238), decays to lead-206 through a series of relatively short-lived isotopes.

Uranium-233 is made from thorium-232 by neutron bombardment, usually in a nuclear reactor, and U is also fissile. Its decay chain forms part of the neptunium series and ends at bismuth-209 and thallium-205.

Uranium-235 is important for both nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons, because it is the only uranium isotope existing in nature on Earth in any significant amount that is fissile. This means that it can be split into two or three fragments (fission products) by thermal neutrons.

Uranium-238 is not fissile, but is a fertile isotope, because after neutron activation it can produce plutonium-239, another fissile isotope. Indeed, the U nucleus can absorb one neutron to produce the radioactive isotope uranium-239. U decays by beta emission to neptunium-239, also a beta-emitter, that decays in its turn, within a few days into plutonium-239. Pu was used as fissile material in the first atomic bomb detonated in the "Trinity test" on 15 July 1945 in New Mexico.

In nature, uranium is found as uranium-238 (99.2742%) and uranium-235 (0.7204%). Isotope separation concentrates (enriches) the fissionable uranium-235 for nuclear weapons and most nuclear power plants, except for gas cooled reactors and pressurised heavy water reactors. Most neutrons released by a fissioning atom of uranium-235 must impact other uranium-235 atoms to sustain the nuclear chain reaction. The concentration and amount of uranium-235 needed to achieve this is called a 'critical mass'.

To be considered 'enriched', the uranium-235 fraction should be between 3% and 5%. This process produces huge quantities of uranium that is depleted of uranium-235 and with a correspondingly increased fraction of uranium-238, called depleted uranium or 'DU'. To be considered 'depleted', the uranium-235 isotope concentration should be no more than 0.3%. The price of uranium has risen since 2001, so enrichment tailings containing more than 0.35% uranium-235 are being considered for re-enrichment, driving the price of depleted uranium hexafluoride above $130 per kilogram in July 2007 from $5 in 2001.

The gas centrifuge process, where gaseous uranium hexafluoride () is separated by the difference in molecular weight between UF and UF using high-speed centrifuges, is the cheapest and leading enrichment process. The gaseous diffusion process had been the leading method for enrichment and was used in the Manhattan Project. In this process, uranium hexafluoride is repeatedly diffused through a silver-zinc membrane, and the different isotopes of uranium are separated by diffusion rate (since uranium 238 is heavier it diffuses slightly slower than uranium-235). The molecular laser isotope separation method employs a laser beam of precise energy to sever the bond between uranium-235 and fluorine. This leaves uranium-238 bonded to fluorine and allows uranium-235 metal to precipitate from the solution. An alternative laser method of enrichment is known as atomic vapor laser isotope separation (AVLIS) and employs visible tunable lasers such as dye lasers. Another method used is liquid thermal diffusion.

A person can be exposed to uranium (or its radioactive daughters, such as radon) by inhaling dust in air or by ingesting contaminated water and food. The amount of uranium in air is usually very small; however, people who work in factories that process phosphate fertilizers, live near government facilities that made or tested nuclear weapons, live or work near a modern battlefield where depleted uranium weapons have been used, or live or work near a coal-fired power plant, facilities that mine or process uranium ore, or enrich uranium for reactor fuel, may have increased exposure to uranium. Houses or structures that are over uranium deposits (either natural or man-made slag deposits) may have an increased incidence of exposure to radon gas. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has set the permissible exposure limit for uranium exposure in the workplace as 0.25 mg/m over an 8-hour workday. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has set a recommended exposure limit (REL) of 0.2 mg/m over an 8-hour workday and a short-term limit of 0.6 mg/m. At levels of 10 mg/m, uranium is immediately dangerous to life and health.

Most ingested uranium is excreted during digestion. Only 0.5% is absorbed when insoluble forms of uranium, such as its oxide, are ingested, whereas absorption of the more soluble uranyl ion can be up to 5%. However, soluble uranium compounds tend to quickly pass through the body, whereas insoluble uranium compounds, especially when inhaled by way of dust into the lungs, pose a more serious exposure hazard. After entering the bloodstream, the absorbed uranium tends to bioaccumulate and stay for many years in bone tissue because of uranium's affinity for phosphates. Uranium is not absorbed through the skin, and alpha particles released by uranium cannot penetrate the skin.

Incorporated uranium becomes uranyl ions, which accumulate in bone, liver, kidney, and reproductive tissues. Uranium can be decontaminated from steel surfaces and aquifers.

Normal functioning of the kidney, brain, liver, heart, and other systems can be affected by uranium exposure, because, besides being weakly radioactive, uranium is a toxic metal. Uranium is also a reproductive toxicant. Radiological effects are generally local because alpha radiation, the primary form of U decay, has a very short range, and will not penetrate skin. Alpha radiation from inhaled uranium has been demonstrated to cause lung cancer in exposed nuclear workers. Uranyl () ions, such as from uranium trioxide or uranyl nitrate and other hexavalent uranium compounds, have been shown to cause birth defects and immune system damage in laboratory animals. While the CDC has published one study that no human cancer has been seen as a result of exposure to natural or depleted uranium, exposure to uranium and its decay products, especially radon, are widely known and significant health threats. Exposure to strontium-90, iodine-131, and other fission products is unrelated to uranium exposure, but may result from medical procedures or exposure to spent reactor fuel or fallout from nuclear weapons.
Although accidental inhalation exposure to a high concentration of uranium hexafluoride has
resulted in human fatalities, those deaths were associated with the generation of highly toxic hydrofluoric acid and uranyl fluoride rather than with uranium itself. Finely divided uranium metal presents a fire hazard because uranium is pyrophoric; small grains will ignite spontaneously in air at room temperature.

Uranium metal is commonly handled with gloves as a sufficient precaution. Uranium concentrate is handled and contained so as to ensure that people do not inhale or ingest it.

Uranium

In nature, uranium is found as uranium-238 (99.2739–99.2752%), uranium-235 (0.7198–0.7202%), and a very small amount of uranium-234 (0.0050–0.0059%). Uranium decays slowly by emitting an alpha particle. The half-life of uranium-238 is about 4.47 billion years and that of uranium-235 is 704 million years, making them useful in dating the age of the Earth.

When refined, uranium is a silvery white, weakly radioactive metal. It has a Mohs hardness of 6, sufficient to scratch glass and approximately equal to that of titanium, rhodium, manganese and niobium. It is malleable, ductile, slightly paramagnetic, strongly electropositive and a poor electrical conductor. Uranium metal has a very high density of 19.1 g/cm, denser than lead (11.3 g/cm), but slightly less dense than tungsten and gold (19.3 g/cm).

Uranium metal reacts with almost all non-metal elements (with the exception of the noble gases) and their compounds, with reactivity increasing with temperature. Hydrochloric and nitric acids dissolve uranium, but non-oxidizing acids other than hydrochloric acid attack the element very slowly. When finely divided, it can react with cold water; in air, uranium metal becomes coated with a dark layer of uranium oxide. Uranium in ores is extracted chemically and converted into uranium dioxide or other chemical forms usable in industry.

As little as 15 lb (7 kg) of uranium-235 can be used to make an atomic bomb. The first nuclear bomb used in war, "Little Boy", relied on uranium fission, but the very first nuclear explosive (the "Gadget" used at Trinity) and the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki ("Fat Man") were both plutonium bombs.

Uranium metal has three allotropic forms:

The main use of uranium in the civilian sector is to fuel nuclear power plants. One kilogram of uranium-235 can theoretically produce about 20 terajoules of energy (2 joules), assuming complete fission; as much energy as 1500 tonnes of coal.

Commercial nuclear power plants use fuel that is typically enriched to around 3% uranium-235. The CANDU and Magnox designs are the only commercial reactors capable of using unenriched uranium fuel. Fuel used for United States Navy reactors is typically highly enriched in uranium-235 (the exact values are classified). In a breeder reactor, uranium-238 can also be converted into plutonium through the following reaction:

Before (and, occasionally, after) the discovery of radioactivity, uranium was primarily used in small amounts for yellow glass and pottery glazes, such as uranium glass and in Fiestaware.

The discovery of the radioactivity of uranium ushered in additional scientific and practical uses of the element. The long half-life of the isotope uranium-238 (4.51 years) makes it well-suited for use in estimating the age of the earliest igneous rocks and for other types of radiometric dating, including uranium–thorium dating, uranium–lead dating and uranium–uranium dating. Uranium metal is used for X-ray targets in the making of high-energy X-rays.

The use of uranium in its natural oxide form dates back to at least the year 79 CE, when it was used to add a yellow color to ceramic glazes. Yellow glass with 1% uranium oxide was found in a Roman villa on Cape Posillipo in the Bay of Naples, Italy, by R. T. Gunther of the University of Oxford in 1912. Starting in the late Middle Ages, pitchblende was extracted from the Habsburg silver mines in Joachimsthal, Bohemia (now Jáchymov in the Czech Republic), and was used as a coloring agent in the local glassmaking industry. In the early 19th century, the world's only known sources of uranium ore were these mines.

In 1841, Eugène-Melchior Péligot, Professor of Analytical Chemistry at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (Central School of Arts and Manufactures) in Paris, isolated the first sample of uranium metal by heating uranium tetrachloride with potassium.

Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity by using uranium in 1896. Becquerel made the discovery in Paris by leaving a sample of a uranium salt, KUO(SO) (potassium uranyl sulfate), on top of an unexposed photographic plate in a drawer and noting that the plate had become "fogged". He determined that a form of invisible light or rays emitted by uranium had exposed the plate.

Above-ground nuclear tests by the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1950s and early 1960s and by France into the 1970s and 1980s spread a significant amount of fallout from uranium daughter isotopes around the world. Additional fallout and pollution occurred from several nuclear accidents.

Uranium miners have a higher incidence of cancer. An excess risk of lung cancer among Navajo uranium miners, for example, has been documented and linked to their occupation. The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, a 1990 law in the US, required $100,000 in "compassion payments" to uranium miners diagnosed with cancer or other respiratory ailments.

Uranium is a naturally occurring element that can be found in low levels within all rock, soil, and water. Uranium is the 51st element in order of abundance in the Earth's crust. Uranium is also the highest-numbered element to be found naturally in significant quantities on Earth and is almost always found combined with other elements. The decay of uranium, thorium, and potassium-40 in the Earth's mantle is thought to be the main source of heat that keeps the outer core liquid and drives mantle convection, which in turn drives plate tectonics.

Uranium's average concentration in the Earth's crust is (depending on the reference) 2 to 4 parts per million, or about 40 times as abundant as silver. The Earth's crust from the surface to 25 km (15 mi) down is calculated to contain 10 kg (2 lb) of uranium while the oceans may contain 10 kg (2 lb). The concentration of uranium in soil ranges from 0.7 to 11 parts per million (up to 15 parts per million in farmland soil due to use of phosphate fertilizers), and its concentration in sea water is 3 parts per billion.

Uranium is more plentiful than antimony, tin, cadmium, mercury, or silver, and it is about as abundant as arsenic or molybdenum. Uranium is found in hundreds of minerals, including uraninite (the most common uranium ore), carnotite, autunite, uranophane, torbernite, and coffinite. Significant concentrations of uranium occur in some substances such as phosphate rock deposits, and minerals such as lignite, and monazite sands in uranium-rich ores (it is recovered commercially from sources with as little as 0.1% uranium).

In nature, uranium(VI) forms highly soluble carbonate complexes at alkaline pH. This leads to an increase in mobility and availability of uranium to groundwater and soil from nuclear wastes which leads to health hazards. However, it is difficult to precipitate uranium as phosphate in the presence of excess carbonate at alkaline pH. A "Sphingomonas" sp. strain BSAR-1 has been found to express a high activity alkaline phosphatase (PhoK) that has been applied for bioprecipitation of uranium as uranyl phosphate species from alkaline solutions. The precipitation ability was enhanced by overexpressing PhoK protein in "E. coli".

Plants absorb some uranium from soil. Dry weight concentrations of uranium in plants range from 5 to 60 parts per billion, and ash from burnt wood can have concentrations up to 4 parts per million. Dry weight concentrations of uranium in food plants are typically lower with one to two micrograms per day ingested through the food people eat.

Worldwide production of UO (yellowcake) in 2013 amounted to 70,015 tonnes, of which 22,451 t (32%) was mined in Kazakhstan. Other important uranium mining countries are Canada (9,331 t), Australia (6,350 t), Niger (4,518 t), Namibia (4,323 t) and Russia (3,135 t).

Commercial-grade uranium can be produced through the reduction of uranium halides with alkali or alkaline earth metals. Uranium metal can also be prepared through electrolysis of or
, dissolved in molten calcium chloride () and sodium chloride (NaCl) solution. Very pure uranium is produced through the thermal decomposition of uranium halides on a hot filament.

Australia has 31% of the world's known uranium ore reserves and the world's largest single uranium deposit, located at the Olympic Dam Mine in South Australia. There is a significant reserve of uranium
in Bakouma a sub-prefecture in the prefecture of Mbomou in Central African Republic.

Some nuclear fuel comes from nuclear weapons being dismantled, such as from the Megatons to Megawatts Program.

An additional 4.6 billion tonnes of uranium are estimated to be in sea water (Japanese scientists in the 1980s showed that extraction of uranium from sea water using ion exchangers was technically feasible). There have been experiments to extract uranium from sea water, but the yield has been low due to the carbonate present in the water. In 2012, ORNL researchers announced the successful development of a new absorbent material dubbed HiCap which performs surface retention of solid or gas molecules, atoms or ions and also effectively removes toxic metals from water, according to results verified by researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

The ultimate available supply is believed to be sufficient for at least the next 85 years, although some studies indicate underinvestment in the late twentieth century may produce supply problems in the 21st century.
Uranium deposits seem to be log-normal distributed. There is a 300-fold increase in the amount of uranium recoverable for each tenfold decrease in ore grade.
In other words, there is little high grade ore and proportionately much more low grade ore available.

Calcined uranium yellowcake, as produced in many large mills, contains a distribution of uranium oxidation species in various forms ranging from most oxidized to least oxidized. Particles with short residence times in a calciner will generally be less oxidized than those with long retention times or particles recovered in the stack scrubber. Uranium content is usually referenced to, which dates to the days of the Manhattan Project when was used as an analytical chemistry reporting standard.

Phase relationships in the uranium-oxygen system are complex. The most important oxidation states of uranium are uranium(IV) and uranium(VI), and their two corresponding oxides are, respectively, uranium dioxide () and uranium trioxide (). Other uranium oxides such as uranium monoxide (UO), diuranium pentoxide (), and uranium peroxide () also exist.

The most common forms of uranium oxide are triuranium octoxide () and. Both oxide forms are solids that have low solubility in water and are relatively stable over a wide range of environmental conditions. Triuranium octoxide is (depending on conditions) the most stable compound of uranium and is the form most commonly found in nature. Uranium dioxide is the form in which uranium is most commonly used as a nuclear reactor fuel. At ambient temperatures, will gradually convert to. Because of their stability, uranium oxides are generally considered the preferred chemical form for storage or disposal.

Unlike the uranyl salts of uranium and polyatomic ion uranium-oxide cationic forms, the uranates, salts containing a polyatomic uranium-oxide anion, are generally not water-soluble.

The interactions of carbonate anions with uranium(VI) cause the Pourbaix diagram to change greatly when the medium is changed from water to a carbonate containing solution. While the vast majority of carbonates are insoluble in water (students are often taught that all carbonates other than those of alkali metals are insoluble in water), uranium carbonates are often soluble in water. This is because a U(VI) cation is able to bind two terminal oxides and three or more carbonates to form anionic complexes.

The uranium fraction diagrams in the presence of carbonate illustrate this further: when the pH of a uranium(VI) solution increases, the uranium is converted to a hydrated uranium oxide hydroxide and at high pHs it becomes an anionic hydroxide complex.

When carbonate is added, uranium is converted to a series of carbonate complexes if the pH is increased. One effect of these reactions is increased solubility of uranium in the pH range 6 to 8, a fact that has a direct bearing on the long term stability of spent uranium dioxide nuclear fuels.

Uranium metal heated to reacts with hydrogen to form uranium hydride. Even higher temperatures will reversibly remove the hydrogen. This property makes uranium hydrides convenient starting materials to create reactive uranium powder along with various uranium carbide, nitride, and halide compounds. Two crystal modifications of uranium hydride exist: an α form that is obtained at low temperatures and a β form that is created when the formation temperature is above 250 °C.

Uranium carbides and uranium nitrides are both relatively inert semimetallic compounds that are minimally soluble in acids, react with water, and can ignite in air to form. Carbides of uranium include uranium monocarbide (UC), uranium dicarbide (), and diuranium tricarbide (). Both UC and are formed by adding carbon to molten uranium or by exposing the metal to carbon monoxide at high temperatures. Stable below 1800 °C, is prepared by subjecting a heated mixture of UC and to mechanical stress. Uranium nitrides obtained by direct exposure of the metal to nitrogen include uranium mononitride (UN), uranium dinitride (), and diuranium trinitride ().

All uranium fluorides are created using uranium tetrafluoride (); itself is prepared by hydrofluorination of uranium dioxide. Reduction of with hydrogen at 1000 °C produces uranium trifluoride (). Under the right conditions of temperature and pressure, the reaction of solid with gaseous uranium hexafluoride () can form the intermediate fluorides of,, and.

At room temperatures, has a high vapor pressure, making it useful in the gaseous diffusion process to separate the rare uranium-235 from the common uranium-238 isotope. This compound can be prepared from uranium dioxide and uranium hydride by the following process:

The resulting, a white solid, is highly reactive (by fluorination), easily sublimes (emitting a vapor that behaves as a nearly ideal gas), and is the most volatile compound of uranium known to exist.

One method of preparing uranium tetrachloride () is to directly combine chlorine with either uranium metal or uranium hydride. The reduction of by hydrogen produces uranium trichloride () while the higher chlorides of uranium are prepared by reaction with additional chlorine. All uranium chlorides react with water and air.

Bromides and iodides of uranium are formed by direct reaction of, respectively, bromine and iodine with uranium or by adding to those element's acids. Known examples include:,,, and. Uranium oxyhalides are water-soluble and include,,, and. Stability of the oxyhalides decrease as the atomic weight of the component halide increases.

Uranium-238 is the most stable isotope of uranium, with a half-life of about 4.468 years, roughly the age of the Earth. Uranium-235 has a half-life of about 7.13 years, and uranium-234 has a half-life of about 2.48 years.
For natural uranium, about 49% of its alpha rays are emitted by each of U atom, and also 49% by U (since the latter is formed from the former) and about 2.0% of them by the U. When the Earth was young, probably about one-fifth of its uranium was uranium-235, but the percentage of U was probably much lower than this.

Uranium-238 is usually an α emitter (occasionally, it undergoes spontaneous fission), decaying through the uranium series, which has 18 members, into lead-206, by a variety of different decay paths.

The decay chain of U, which is called the actinium series, has 15 members and eventually decays into lead-207. The constant rates of decay in these decay series makes the comparison of the ratios of parent to daughter elements useful in radiometric dating.

Uranium-234, which is a member of the uranium series (the decay chain of uranium-238), decays to lead-206 through a series of relatively short-lived isotopes.

Uranium-233 is made from thorium-232 by neutron bombardment, usually in a nuclear reactor, and U is also fissile. Its decay chain forms part of the neptunium series and ends at bismuth-209 and thallium-205.

Uranium-235 is important for both nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons, because it is the only uranium isotope existing in nature on Earth in any significant amount that is fissile. This means that it can be split into two or three fragments (fission products) by thermal neutrons.

Uranium-238 is not fissile, but is a fertile isotope, because after neutron activation it can produce plutonium-239, another fissile isotope. Indeed, the U nucleus can absorb one neutron to produce the radioactive isotope uranium-239. U decays by beta emission to neptunium-239, also a beta-emitter, that decays in its turn, within a few days into plutonium-239. Pu was used as fissile material in the first atomic bomb detonated in the "Trinity test" on 15 July 1945 in New Mexico.

In nature, uranium is found as uranium-238 (99.2742%) and uranium-235 (0.7204%). Isotope separation concentrates (enriches) the fissionable uranium-235 for nuclear weapons and most nuclear power plants, except for gas cooled reactors and pressurised heavy water reactors. Most neutrons released by a fissioning atom of uranium-235 must impact other uranium-235 atoms to sustain the nuclear chain reaction. The concentration and amount of uranium-235 needed to achieve this is called a 'critical mass'.

To be considered 'enriched', the uranium-235 fraction should be between 3% and 5%. This process produces huge quantities of uranium that is depleted of uranium-235 and with a correspondingly increased fraction of uranium-238, called depleted uranium or 'DU'. To be considered 'depleted', the uranium-235 isotope concentration should be no more than 0.3%. The price of uranium has risen since 2001, so enrichment tailings containing more than 0.35% uranium-235 are being considered for re-enrichment, driving the price of depleted uranium hexafluoride above $130 per kilogram in July 2007 from $5 in 2001.

Most ingested uranium is excreted during digestion. Only 0.5% is absorbed when insoluble forms of uranium, such as its oxide, are ingested, whereas absorption of the more soluble uranyl ion can be up to 5%. However, soluble uranium compounds tend to quickly pass through the body, whereas insoluble uranium compounds, especially when inhaled by way of dust into the lungs, pose a more serious exposure hazard. After entering the bloodstream, the absorbed uranium tends to bioaccumulate and stay for many years in bone tissue because of uranium's affinity for phosphates. Uranium is not absorbed through the skin, and alpha particles released by uranium cannot penetrate the skin.

Incorporated uranium becomes uranyl ions, which accumulate in bone, liver, kidney, and reproductive tissues. Uranium can be decontaminated from steel surfaces and aquifers.

Uranium metal is commonly handled with gloves as a sufficient precaution. Uranium concentrate is handled and contained so as to ensure that people do not inhale or ingest it.

U, with a half-life of about 4.5 billion years, decays to U through emission of an alpha particle to thorium-234 (Th), which is comparatively unstable with a half-life of just 24 days. Th then decays through beta particle emission to protactinium-234 (Pa)). This decays with a half-life of 6.7 hours, again through emission of a beta particle, to U. This isotope has a half-life of about 245,000 years. The next decay product, thorium-230 (Th), has a half-life of about 75,000 years and is used in the uranium-thorium technique. Although analytically simpler, in practice U/U requires knowledge of the ratio at the time the material under study was formed and is generally used only for samples older than the ca. 450,000 year upper limit of the Th/U technique. For those materials (principally marine carbonates) for which these conditions apply, it remains a superior technique.

Uranium–uranium dating

Uranium–uranium dating is a radiometric dating technique which compares two isotopes of uranium (U) in a sample: uranium-234 (U) and uranium-238 (U). It is one of several radiometric dating techniques exploiting the uranium radioactive decay series, in which U undergoes 14 alpha and beta decay events on the way to the stable isotope Pb. Other dating techniques using this decay series include uranium–thorium dating and uranium–lead dating.

Unlike other radiometric dating techniques, those using the uranium decay series (except for those using the stable final isotopes Pb and Pb) compare the ratios of two radioactive unstable isotopes. This complicates calculations as both the parent and daughter isotopes decay over time into other isotopes.

In theory, the U/U technique can be useful in dating samples between about 10,000 and 2 million years Before Present (BP), or up to about eight times the half-life of U. As such, it provides a useful bridge in radiometric dating techniques between the ranges of Th/U (accurate up to ca. 450,000 years) and U–Pb dating (accurate up to the age of the solar system, but problematic on samples younger than about 2 million years).

Modern deposits of uranium contain only up to ~0.7% U (and ~99.3% U), which is not enough to sustain a chain reaction moderated by ordinary water. But U has a much shorter half-life (700 million years) than U (4.5 billion years), so in the distant past the percentage of U was much higher. About two billion years ago, a water-saturated uranium deposit (in what is now the Oklo mine in Gabon, West Africa) underwent a naturally occurring chain reaction that was moderated by groundwater and, presumably, controlled by the negative void coefficient as the water boiled from the heat of the reaction. Uranium from the Oklo mine is about 50% depleted compared to other locations: it is only about 0.3% to 0.7% U; and the ore contains traces of stable daughters of long-decayed fission products.Fermi age theory

Nuclear reactor physics

Nuclear reactor physics is the branch of science that deals with the study and application of chain reaction to induce a controlled rate of fission in a nuclear reactor for the production of energy.
Most nuclear reactors use a chain reaction to induce a controlled rate of nuclear fission in fissile material, releasing both energy and free neutrons. A reactor consists of an assembly of nuclear fuel (a reactor core), usually surrounded by a neutron moderator such as regular water, heavy water, graphite, or zirconium hydride, and fitted with mechanisms such as control rods that control the rate of the reaction.

The physics of nuclear fission has several quirks that affect the design and behavior of nuclear reactors. This article presents a general overview of the physics of nuclear reactors and their behavior.

In a nuclear reactor, the neutron population at any instant is a function of the rate of neutron production (due to fission processes) and the rate of neutron losses (due to non-fission absorption mechanisms and leakage from the system). When a reactor’s neutron population remains steady from one generation to the next (creating as many new neutrons as are lost), the fission chain reaction is self-sustaining and the reactor's condition is referred to as "critical". When the reactor’s neutron production exceeds losses, characterized by increasing power level, it is considered "supercritical", and when losses dominate, it is considered "subcritical" and exhibits decreasing power.

The "Six-factor formula" is the neutron life-cycle balance equation, which includes six separate factors, the product of which is equal to the ratio of the number of neutrons in any generation to that of the previous one; this parameter is called the effective multiplication factor k, also denoted by K, where k = Є "L" ρ "L" "f" η, where Є = "fast-fission factor", "L" = "fast non-leakage factor", ρ = "resonance escape probability", "L" = "thermal non-leakage factor", "f" = "thermal fuel utilization factor", and η = "reproduction factor". This equation's factors are roughly in order of potential occurrence for a fission born neutron during critical operation. As already mentioned before, k = (Neutrons produced in one generation)/(Neutrons produced in the previous generation). In other words, when the reactor is critical, k = 1; when the reactor is subcritical, k < 1; and when the reactor is supercritical, k > 1.

"Reactivity" is an expression of the departure from criticality. δk = (k − 1)/k. When the reactor is critical, δk = 0. When the reactor is subcritical, δk < 0. When the reactor is supercritical, δk > 0. Reactivity is also represented by the lowercase Greek letter rho (ρ). Reactivity is commonly expressed in decimals or percentages or pcm (per cent mille) of Δk/k. When reactivity ρ is expressed in units of delayed neutron fraction β, the unit is called the "dollar".

If we write 'N' for the number of free neutrons in a reactor core and formula_1 for the average lifetime of each neutron (before it either escapes from the core or is absorbed by a nucleus), then the reactor will follow the differential equation ("evolution equation")

where formula_3 is a constant of proportionality, and formula_4 is the rate of change of the neutron count in the core. This type of differential equation describes exponential growth or exponential decay, depending on the sign of the constant formula_3, which is just the expected number of neutrons after one average neutron lifetime has elapsed:

Here, formula_7 is the probability that a particular neutron will strike a fuel nucleus, formula_8 is the probability that the neutron, having struck the fuel, will cause that nucleus to undergo fission, formula_9 is the probability that it will be absorbed by something other than fuel, and formula_10 is the probability that it will "escape" by leaving the core altogether. formula_11 is the number of neutrons produced, on average, by a fission event—it is between 2 and 3 for both U and Pu.

If formula_3 is positive, then the core is "supercritical" and the rate of neutron production will grow exponentially until some other effect stops the growth. If formula_3 is negative, then the core is "subcritical" and the number of free neutrons in the core will shrink exponentially until it reaches an equilibrium at zero (or the background level from spontaneous fission). If formula_3 is exactly zero, then the reactor is "critical" and its output does not vary in time (formula_15, from above).

Nuclear reactors are engineered to reduce formula_10 and formula_9. Small, compact structures reduce the probability of direct escape by minimizing the surface area of the core, and some materials (such as graphite) can reflect some neutrons back into the core, further reducing formula_10.

The probability of fission, formula_8, depends on the nuclear physics of the fuel, and is often expressed as a cross section. Reactors are usually controlled by adjusting formula_9. Control rods made of a strongly neutron-absorbent material such as cadmium or boron can be inserted into the core: any neutron that happens to impact the control rod is lost from the chain reaction, reducing formula_3. formula_9 is also controlled by the recent history of the reactor core itself (see below).

The mere fact that an assembly is supercritical does not guarantee that it contains any free neutrons at all. At least one neutron is required to "strike" a chain reaction, and if the spontaneous fission rate is sufficiently low it may take a long time (in U reactors, as long as many minutes) before a chance neutron encounter starts a chain reaction even if the reactor is supercritical. Most nuclear reactors include a "starter" neutron source that ensures there are always a few free neutrons in the reactor core, so that a chain reaction will begin immediately when the core is made critical. A common type of startup neutron source is a mixture of an alpha particle emitter such as Am (americium-241) with a lightweight isotope such as Be (beryllium-9).

The primary sources described above have to be used with fresh reactor cores. For operational reactors, secondary sources are used; most often a combination of antimony with beryllium. Antimony becomes activated in the reactor and produces high-energy gamma photons, which produce photoneutrons from beryllium.

Uranium-235 undergoes a small rate of natural spontaneous fission, so there are always some neutrons being produced even in a fully shutdown reactor. When the control rods are withdrawn and criticality is approached the number increases because the absorption of neutrons is being progressively reduced, until at criticality the chain reaction becomes self-sustaining. Note that while a neutron source is provided in the reactor, this is not essential to start the chain reaction, its main purpose is to give a shutdown neutron population which is detectable by instruments and so make the approach to critical more observable. The reactor will go critical at the same control rod position whether a source is loaded or not.

Once the chain reaction is begun, the primary starter source may be removed from the core to prevent damage from the high neutron flux in the operating reactor core; the secondary sources usually remains in situ to provide a background reference level for control of criticality.

Even in a subcritical assembly such as a shut-down reactor core, any stray neutron that happens to be present in the core (for example from spontaneous fission of the fuel, from radioactive decay of fission products, or from a neutron source) will trigger an exponentially decaying chain reaction. Although the chain reaction is not self-sustaining, it acts as a multiplier that increases the equilibrium number of neutrons in the core. This "subcritical multiplication" effect can be used in two ways: as a probe of how close a core is to criticality, and as a way to generate fission power without the risks associated with a critical mass.

If formula_23 is the neutron multiplication factor of a subcritical core and formula_24 is the number of neutrons coming per generation in the reactor from an external source, then at the instant when the neutron source is switched on, number of neutrons in the core will be formula_24. After 1 generation, this neutrons will produce formula_26 neutrons in the reactor and reactor will have a totality of formula_27 neutrons considering the newly entered neutrons in the reactor. Similarly after 2 generation, number of neutrons produced in the reactor will be formula_28 and so on. This process will continue and after a long enough time, the number of neutrons in the reactor will be,

This series will converge because for the subcritical core, formula_30. So the number of neutrons in the reactor will be simply,

The fraction formula_32 is called subcritical multiplication factor.

Since power in a reactor is proportional to the number of neutrons present in the nuclear fuel material (material in which fission can occur), the power produced by such a subcritical core will also be proportional to the subcritical multiplication factor and the external source strength.

As a measurement technique, subcritical multiplication was used during the Manhattan Project in early experiments to determine the minimum critical masses of U and of Pu. It is still used today to calibrate the controls for nuclear reactors during startup, as many effects (discussed in the following sections) can change the required control settings to achieve criticality in a reactor. As a power-generating technique, subcritical multiplication allows generation of nuclear power for fission where a critical assembly is undesirable for safety or other reasons. A subcritical assembly together with a neutron source can serve as a steady source of heat to generate power from fission.

Including the effect of an external neutron source ("external" to the fission process, not physically external to the core), one can write a modified evolution equation:

where formula_34 is the rate at which the external source injects neutrons into the core. In equilibrium, the core is not changing and dN/dt is zero, so the equilibrium number of neutrons is given by:

If the core is subcritical, then formula_3 is negative so there is an equilibrium with a positive number of neutrons. If the core is close to criticality, then formula_3 is very small and thus the final number of neutrons can be made arbitrarily large.

To improve formula_8 and enable a chain reaction, uranium-fueled reactors must include a neutron moderator that interacts with newly produced fast neutrons from fission events to reduce their kinetic energy from several MeV to thermal energies of less than one eV, making them more likely to induce fission. This is because U is much more likely to undergo fission when struck by one of these thermal neutrons than by a freshly produced neutron from fission.

Neutron moderators are thus materials that slow down neutrons. Neutrons are most effectively slowed by colliding with the nucleus of a light atom, hydrogen being the lightest of all. To be effective, moderator materials must thus contain light elements with atomic nuclei that tend to scatter neutrons on impact rather than absorb them. In addition to hydrogen, beryllium and carbon atoms are also suited to the job of moderating or slowing down neutrons.

Hydrogen moderators include water (HO), heavy water(DO), and zirconium hydride (ZrH), all of which work because a hydrogen nucleus has nearly the same mass as a free neutron: neutron-HO or neutron-ZrH impacts excite rotational modes of the molecules (spinning them around). Deuterium nuclei (in heavy water) absorb kinetic energy less well than do light hydrogen nuclei, but they are much less likely to absorb the impacting neutron. Water or heavy water have the advantage of being transparent liquids, so that, in addition to shielding and moderating a reactor core, they permit direct viewing of the core in operation and can also serve as a working fluid for heat transfer.

Carbon in the form of graphite has been widely used as a moderator. It was used in Chicago Pile-1, the world's first man-made critical assembly, and was commonplace in early reactor designs including the Soviet RBMK nuclear power plants such as the Chernobyl plant.

The amount and nature of neutron moderation affects reactor controllability and hence safety. Because moderators both slow and absorb neutrons, there is an optimum amount of moderator to include in a given geometry of reactor core. Less moderation reduces the effectiveness by reducing the formula_8 term in the evolution equation, and more moderation reduces the effectiveness by increasing the formula_10 term.

Most moderators become less effective with increasing temperature, so "under-moderated" reactors are stable against changes in temperature in the reactor core: if the core overheats, then the quality of the moderator is reduced and the reaction tends to slow down (there is a "negative temperature coefficient" in the reactivity of the core). Water is an extreme case: in extreme heat, it can boil, producing effective voids in the reactor core without destroying the physical structure of the core; this tends to shut down the reaction and reduce the possibility of a fuel meltdown. "Over-moderated" reactors are unstable against changes in temperature (there is a "positive temperature coefficient" in the reactivity of the core), and so are less inherently safe than under-moderated cores.

Some reactors use a combination of moderator materials. For example, TRIGA type research reactors use ZrH moderator mixed with the U fuel, an HO-filled core, and C (graphite) moderator and reflector blocks around the periphery of the core.

Fission reactions and subsequent neutron escape happen very quickly; this is important for nuclear weapons, where the objective is to make a nuclear core release as much energy as possible before it physically explodes. Most neutrons emitted by fission events are prompt: they are emitted effectively instantaneously. Once emitted, the average neutron lifetime (formula_1) in a typical core is on the order of a millisecond, so if the exponential factor formula_3 is as small as 0.01, then in one second the reactor power will vary by a factor of (1 + 0.01), or more than ten thousand. Nuclear weapons are engineered to maximize the power growth rate, with lifetimes well under a millisecond and exponential factors close to 2; but such rapid variation would render it practically impossible to control the reaction rates in a nuclear reactor.

Fortunately, the "effective" neutron lifetime is much longer than the average lifetime of a single neutron in the core. About 0.65% of the neutrons produced by U fission, and about 0.20% of the neutrons produced by Pu fission, are not produced immediately, but rather are emitted from an excited nucleus after a further decay step. In this step, further radioactive decay of some of the fission products (almost always negative beta decay), is followed by immediate neutron emission from the excited daughter product, with an average life time of the beta decay (and thus the neutron emission) of about 15 seconds. These so-called delayed neutrons increase the effective average lifetime of neutrons in the core, to nearly 0.1 seconds, so that a core with formula_3 of 0.01 would increase in one second by only a factor of (1 + 0.01), or about 1.1: a 10% increase. This is a controllable rate of change.

Most nuclear reactors are hence operated in a "prompt subcritical", "delayed critical" condition: the prompt neutrons alone are not sufficient to sustain a chain reaction, but the delayed neutrons make up the small difference required to keep the reaction going. This has effects on how reactors are controlled: when a small amount of control rod is slid into or out of the reactor core, the power level changes at first very rapidly due to "prompt subcritical multiplication" and then more gradually, following the exponential growth or decay curve of the delayed critical reaction. Furthermore, "increases" in reactor power can be performed at any desired rate simply by pulling out a sufficient length of control rod. However, without addition of a neutron poison or active neutron-absorber, "decreases" in fission rate are limited in speed, because even if the reactor is taken deeply subcritical to stop prompt fission neutron production, delayed neutrons are produced after ordinary beta decay of fission products already in place, and this decay-production of neutrons cannot be changed.

The kinetics of the reactor is described by the balance equations of neutrons and nuclei (fissile, fission products).

Any element that strongly absorbs neutrons is called a reactor poison, because it tends to shut down (poison) an ongoing fission chain reaction. Some reactor poisons are deliberately inserted into fission reactor cores to control the reaction; boron or cadmium control rods are the best example. Many reactor poisons are produced by the fission process itself, and buildup of neutron-absorbing fission products affects both the fuel economics and the controllability of nuclear reactors.

In practice, buildup of reactor poisons in nuclear fuel is what determines the lifetime of nuclear fuel in a reactor: long before all possible fissions have taken place, buildup of long-lived neutron absorbing fission products damps out the chain reaction. This is the reason that nuclear reprocessing is a useful activity: spent nuclear fuel contains about 96% of the original fissionable material present in newly manufactured nuclear fuel. Chemical separation of the fission products restores the nuclear fuel so that it can be used again.

Nuclear reprocessing is useful economically because chemical separation is much simpler to accomplish than the difficult isotope separation required to prepare nuclear fuel from natural uranium ore, so that in principle chemical separation yields more generated energy for less effort than mining, purifying, and isotopically separating new uranium ore. In practice, both the difficulty of handling the highly radioactive fission products and other political concerns make fuel reprocessing a contentious subject. One such concern is the fact that spent uranium nuclear fuel contains significant quantities of Pu, a prime ingredient in nuclear weapons (see breeder reactor).

Short-lived reactor poisons in fission products strongly affect how nuclear reactors can operate. Unstable fission product nuclei transmute into many different elements ("secondary fission products") as they undergo a decay chain to a stable isotope. The most important such element is xenon, because the isotope Xe, a secondary fission product with a half-life of about 9 hours, is an extremely strong neutron absorber. In an operating reactor, each nucleus of Xe becomes Xe (which may later sustain beta decay) by neutron capture almost as soon as it is created, so that there is no buildup in the core. However, when a reactor shuts down, the level of Xe builds up in the core for about 9 hours before beginning to decay. The result is that, about 6–8 hours after a reactor is shut down, it can become physically impossible to restart the chain reaction until the Xe has had a chance to decay over the next several hours. This temporary state, which may last several days and prevent restart, is called the iodine pit or xenon-poisoning. It is one reason why nuclear power reactors are usually operated at an even power level around the clock.

Xe buildup in a reactor core makes it extremely dangerous to operate the reactor a few hours after it has been shut down. Because the Xe absorbs neutrons strongly, starting a reactor in a high-Xe condition requires pulling the control rods out of the core much farther than normal. However, if the reactor does achieve criticality, then the neutron flux in the core becomes high and Xe is destroyed rapidly—this has the same effect as very rapidly removing a great length of control rod from the core, and can cause the reaction to grow too rapidly or even become prompt critical.

Xe played a large part in the Chernobyl accident: about eight hours after a scheduled maintenance shutdown, workers tried to bring the reactor to a zero power critical condition to test a control circuit. Since the core was loaded with Xe from the previous day's power generation, it was necessary to withdraw more control rods to achieve this. As a result, the overdriven reaction grew rapidly and uncontrollably, leading to steam explosion in the core, and violent destruction of the facility.

While many fissionable isotopes exist in nature, the only usefully fissile isotope found in any quantity is U. About 0.7% of the uranium in most ores is the 235 isotope, and about 99.3% is the non-fissile 238 isotope. For most uses as a nuclear fuel, uranium must be "enriched" - purified so that it contains a higher percentage of U. Because U absorbs fast neutrons, the critical mass needed to sustain a chain reaction increases as the U content increases, reaching infinity at 94% U (6% U).
Concentrations lower than 6% U cannot go fast critical, though they are usable in a nuclear reactor with a neutron moderator.
A nuclear weapon primary stage using uranium uses HEU enriched to ~90% U, though the secondary stage often uses lower enrichments. Nuclear reactors with water moderator require at least some enrichment of U. Nuclear reactors with heavy water moderation can operate with natural uranium, eliminating altogether the need for enrichment and preventing the fuel from being useful for nuclear weapons; the CANDU power reactors used in Canadian power plants are an example of this type.

Uranium enrichment is difficult because the chemical properties of U and U are identical, so physical processes such as gaseous diffusion, gas centrifuge or mass spectrometry must be used for isotopic separation based on small differences in mass. Because enrichment is the main technical hurdle to production of nuclear fuel and simple nuclear weapons, enrichment technology is politically sensitive.

Notes on nuclear diffusion by Dr. Abdelhamid Dokhane