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Sample of uranium ore. Uranium ore deposits are economically recoverable concentrations of uranium within Earth's crust. Uranium is one of the most common elements in Earth's crust, being 40 times more common than silver and 500 times more common than gold. [1] It can be found almost everywhere in rock, soil, rivers, and oceans. [2]
Uranium-235, the fissile isotope of uranium used in nuclear reactors, makes up about 0.7% of uranium from ore. It is the only naturally occurring isotope capable of directly generating nuclear power. While uranium-235 can be "bred" from 234
It is found in many minerals including uraninite (the most common uranium ore), autunite, uranophane, torbernite, and coffinite. [7] There are significant concentrations of uranium 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 these ...
Uranium mining is the process of extracting uranium ore from the ground. Kazakhstan, Canada, and Australia are the top three producers and together account for 63% of world uranium production. [30] A prominent use of uranium is as fuel for nuclear power plants. The mining and milling of uranium present significant dangers to the environment. [31]
Uranium in New Mexico is almost all in the Grants mineral belt, along the south margin of the San Juan Basin in McKinley and Cibola counties, in the northwest part of the state. [46] No mining has been done since 2002, even though the state has second-largest known uranium ore reserves in the US. [47]
Uraninite, also known as pitchblende, is a radioactive, uranium-rich mineral and ore with a chemical composition that is largely UO 2 but because of oxidation typically contains variable proportions of U 3 O 8. Radioactive decay of the uranium causes the mineral to contain oxides of lead and trace amounts of helium.
The "special nuclear materials" are also plutonium-239, uranium-233, and enriched uranium (U-235). Note that the 1980 Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material definition of nuclear material does not include thorium. [4] The NRC has a regulatory process for nuclear materials with five main components. [5]
Natural uranium (NU or U nat [1]) is uranium with the same isotopic ratio as found in nature. It contains 0.711% uranium-235 , 99.284% uranium-238 , and a trace of uranium-234 by weight (0.0055%). Approximately 2.2% of its radioactivity comes from uranium-235, 48.6% from uranium-238, and 49.2% from uranium-234.