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The longest-lived and most abundant (nearly 100%) naturally occurring isotope of protactinium, protactinium-231, has a half-life of 32,760 years and is a decay product of uranium-235. Much smaller trace amounts of the short-lived protactinium-234 and its nuclear isomer protactinium-234m occur in the decay chain of uranium-238 .
This research resulted in the successful identification of a new element in the decay chain between uranium-235 and actinium, later named protactinium. The discovery of protactinium completed the early version of the periodic table proposed by Dmitri Mendeleev, who predicted the existence of an element between thorium and uranium in 1871. [5]
If the protactinium remains in the reactor, small amounts of uranium-232 are also produced, which has the strong gamma emitter thallium-208 in its decay chain. Similar to uranium-fueled designs, the longer the fuel and fertile material remain in the reactor, the more of these undesirable elements build up.
In some thorium breeding scenarios, the intermediate product protactinium 233 Pa would be removed from the reactor and allowed to decay into highly pure 233 U, an attractive bomb-making material. More modern designs propose to use a lower specific power or a separate thorium breeding blanket.
Thorium-233 decays into protactinium-233 through beta decay. Protactinium-233 has a half-life of 27 days and beta decays into uranium-233; some proposed molten salt reactor designs attempt to physically isolate the protactinium from further neutron capture before beta decay can occur, to maintain the neutron economy (if it misses the 233 U ...
The LFTR resists diversion of its fuel to nuclear weapons in four ways: first, the thorium-232 breeds by converting first to protactinium-233, which then decays to uranium-233. If the protactinium remains in the reactor, small amounts of U-232 are also produced. U-232 has a decay chain product (thallium-208) that emits powerful, dangerous gamma ...
Reigning MVPs Nikola Jokic and Nathan MacKinnon can be seen on television again by a majority of Colorado fans after Altitude Sports ended a long-running dispute with Comcast, the region’s ...
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