Why uranium is called radioactive

The element was named in honor of the planet Uranus — itself only recently discovered at that time. Not Compatible. Welcome to OranoGroup! We are sorry, but this browser is not supported. To get the best experience using OranoGroup, we recommand that you use a supported browser.

Unpacking nuclear Nuclear energy. Uranium is found in various types of ore and is about 1, times more abundant than gold! Where about do we find uranium? A word or two on chemistry for a better understanding. Did you know? From ore to reactor: how is uranium transformed? Uranium ore can be mined by underground or open-cut methods, depending on its depth. After mining, the ore is crushed and ground up.

Then it is treated with acid to dissolve the uranium, which is recovered from solution. Uranium may also be mined by in situ leaching ISL , where it is dissolved from a porous underground ore body in situ and pumped to the surface. This is the form in which uranium is sold. Before it can be used in a reactor for electricity generation, however, it must undergo a series of processes to produce a useable fuel.

For most of the world's reactors, the next step in making the fuel is to convert the uranium oxide into a gas, uranium hexafluoride UF 6 , which enables it to be enriched. Enrichment increases the proportion of the uranium isotope from its natural level of 0. This enables greater technical efficiency in reactor design and operation, particularly in larger reactors, and allows the use of ordinary water as a moderator.

After enrichment, the UF 6 gas is converted to uranium dioxide UO 2 which is formed into fuel pellets. These fuel pellets are placed inside thin metal tubes, known as fuel rods, which are assembled in bundles to become the fuel elements or assemblies for the core of the reactor.

In a typical large power reactor there might be 51, fuel rods with over 18 million pellets. For reactors which use natural uranium as their fuel and hence which require graphite or heavy water as a moderator the U 3 O 8 concentrate simply needs to be refined and converted directly to uranium dioxide.

When the uranium fuel has been in the reactor for about three years, the used fuel is removed, stored, and then either reprocessed or disposed of underground see Nuclear Fuel Cycle or Radioactive Waste Management. This amounts to over TWh each year, as much as from all sources of electricity worldwide in It comes from about nuclear reactors with a total output capacity of about , megawatts MWe operating in 32 countries.

About 50 more reactors are under construction and about are planned. Over the 60 years that the world has enjoyed the benefits of cleanly-generated electricity from nuclear power, there have been over 18, reactor-years of operational experience. See also Nuclear Generation by Country. Uranium is widespread in many rocks, and even in seawater. However, like other metals, it is seldom sufficiently concentrated to be economically recoverable. Where it is, we speak of an orebody.

In defining what is ore, assumptions are made about the cost of mining and the market price of the metal. Uranium reserves are therefore calculated as tonnes recoverable up to a certain cost. NB: the figures in this table are liable to change as new data becomes available. Mining methods have been changing. From the new Canadian mines increased it again. In situ leach ISL, also called in situ recovery, ISR mining has been steadily increasing its share of the total, mainly due to Kazakhstan, and in accounted for over half of production:.

Uranium is sold only to countries which are signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty NPT , and which allow international inspection to verify that it is used only for peaceful purposes.

It is all over the planet, and makes up about 2 to 4 parts per million of most rocks. It is 48th among the most abundant elements found in natural crustal rock, according to the U. Department of Energy , and is 40 times more abundant than silver. Though uranium is highly associated with radioactivity, its rate of decay is so low that this element is actually not one of the more radioactive ones out there.

Uranium has a half-life of an incredible 4. Uranium has a half-life of just over million years. Uranium has the shortest half-life of them all at , years, but it occurs only indirectly from the decay of U In comparison, the most radioactive element is polonium.

It has a half-life of a mere days. Still, uranium has explosive potential, thanks to its ability to sustain a nuclear chain reaction. U is "fissile," meaning that its nucleus can be split by thermal neutrons — neutrons with the same energy as their ambient surroundings. Here's how it works, according to the World Nuclear Association: The nucleus of a U atom has neutrons.

When a free neutron bumps into the atom, it splits the nucleus, throwing off additional neurons, which can then zing into the nuclei of nearby U atoms, creating a self-sustaining cascade of nuclear fission.

The fission events each generate heat. In a nuclear reactor, this heat is used to boil water, creating steam that turns a turbine to generate power, and the reaction is controlled by materials such as cadmium or boron, which can absorb extra neutrons to take them out of the reaction chain. In a fission bomb like the one that destroyed Hiroshima, the reaction goes supercritical. What this means is the fission occurs at an ever-increasing rate. These supercritical reactions release massive amounts of energy: The blast that destroyed Hiroshima had the power of an estimated 15 kilotons of TNT, all created with less than a kilogram 2.

To make uranium fission more efficient, nuclear engineers enrich it. Natural uranium is only about 0. Production of uranium dioxide or metal requires chemical processing of yellowcake. Further, most civilian and many military reactors require uranium that has a higher proportion of uranium than present in natural uranium.

The process used to increase the amount of uranium relative to uranium is known as uranium enrichment. Some research reactors and all U. To enrich uranium, it must first be put in the chemical form uranium hexafluoride UF 6.

After enrichment, UF6 is chemically converted to uranium dioxide or metal. A major hazard in both the uranium conversion and uranium enrichment processes comes from the handling of uranium hexafluoride, which is chemically toxic as well as radioactive. Moreover, it reacts readily with moisture, releasing highly toxic hydrofluoric acid.

Conversion and enrichment facilities have had a number of accidents involving uranium hexafluoride. The bulk of waste from the enrichment process is depleted uranium—so-called because most of the uranium has been extracted from it.

Depleted uranium has been used by the U. It was incorporated into these conventional weapons without informing armed forces personnel that depleted uranium is a radioactive material and without procedures for measuring doses to operating personnel.

The enrichment process can also be reversed. Uranium metal at various enrichments must be chemically processed so that it can be blended into a homogeneous material at one enrichment level. As a result, the health and environmental risks of blending are similar to those for uranium conversion and enrichment. In the federal government set standards for controlling pollution from active and abandoned mill tailings piles resulting from yellowcake production.

The principal goals of federal regulations are to limit the seepage of radionuclides and heavy metals into groundwater and reduce emissions of radon to the air.