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Uranium-235 (235 U or U-235) is an isotope of uranium making up about 0.72% of natural uranium. Unlike the predominant isotope uranium-238, it is fissile, i.e., it can sustain a nuclear chain reaction. It is the only fissile isotope that exists in nature as a primordial nuclide. Uranium-235 has a half-life of 703.8 million years.
The 4n+3 chain of uranium-235 is commonly called the "actinium series" or "actinium cascade". Beginning with the naturally-occurring isotope uranium-235, this decay series includes the following elements: actinium, astatine, bismuth, francium, lead, polonium, protactinium, radium, radon, thallium, and thorium. All are present, at least ...
Uranium-235 makes up about 0.72% of natural uranium. Unlike the predominant isotope uranium-238, it is fissile, i.e., it can sustain a fission chain reaction. It is the only fissile isotope that is a primordial nuclide or found in significant quantity in nature. Uranium-235 has a half-life of 703.8 million years.
Similarly, thorium gas mantles are very slightly radioactive when new, but become more radioactive after only a few months of storage as the daughters of 232 Th build up. Although it cannot be predicted whether any given atom of a radioactive substance will decay at any given time, the decay products of a radioactive substance are extremely ...
Uranium-235 was the first isotope that was found to be fissile. Other naturally occurring isotopes are fissionable, but not fissile. [citation needed] On bombardment with slow neutrons, uranium-235 most of the time splits into two smaller nuclei, releasing nuclear binding energy and more neutrons.
This required uranium-235 (U 235), the fissionable isotope of uranium. However, the vast majority of uranium mined from the ground is uranium-238 , while only 0.7% is U 235 . Scientists developed several processes for separating the isotopes of uranium, including electromagnetic separation and gaseous diffusion.
George Placzek asked Bohr why uranium fissioned with both very fast and very slow neutrons. Walking to a meeting with Wheeler, Bohr had an insight that the fission at low energies was due to the uranium-235 isotope, while at high energies it was mainly due to the far more abundant uranium-238 isotope. [120]
The situation with uranium-233 is more complicated, [1] as U-233 is difficult to store safely, which is both an advantage and a disadvantage. Decay of the associated uranium-232 produces thorium-228 with a radioactive half-life of 1.9 years and several short-lived daughter nuclides; these daughters include some very hard gamma-ray emitters like ...