Article changed over to new WikiProject Elements format by contributors to /Temp and mav 11:18, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Information Sources

Data for the table was obtained from the sources listed on the subject page and WikiProject Elements but was reformatted and converted into SI units.

Caution needs to be exercised in using the words fissile and fissionable.

U-238 is fissionable, and fast fission of U-238 delivers much of the power in three-stage fission-fusion-fission weapons. But it is not fissile, and contributes little to the power of a thermal or near-thermal power reactor (the PWR and BWR are not fully thermalised, owing to the competing need to reduce neutron losses).

U-235 and U-233 are fissile. Andrewa 17:01 20 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Shouldn't the atomic weight (somewhere around 210-250 or so) be mentioned in the article? Ilyanep 22:03, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)

In the table now. --mav 11:18, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Question: The text says "Because uranium has such a long radioactive half-life (4.47x109 years for U-238), the total amount of it on Earth stays almost the same." However, this isn't strictly true -- the half-life implies that there's only about half the amount of uranium left of what existed when the Earth was created. --Guan 19:38, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hmm, yeah, that doesn't make much sense, I don't think. I've removed it -- better to omit something like that than to have it be wrong, I think. If someone knows better, please re-insert it. --Fastfission 04:59, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This article should probably link to the articles on radiomentirc dating since there are a few radiometric dating methods than measure uranium isotopes--nixie 01:23, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I added a small line about it to the "applications" section. --Fastfission 04:59, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

anl.gov is down right now, so I can't check Fastfission's statement about the hazards of the decay products. However, U238 is an alpha emitter, the next two decay products are beta emitters, leaving U234. The alpha emitters are far more dangerous than beta's because alphas are typically very high energy, and for a given energy they are more damaging. U234 is an alpha, but the next decay product, Th230 has a half life of 80,000 years, so very little of it builds up in human timescales. As for U235, an alpha emitter, the next daughter is a beta emitter, and the next is Th 231 with a half life of 32,500 years, so it doesn't have time to build up. To summarize, the radiation of the parent uranium isotopes are far more hazardous than the daughters. pstudier 02:15, 2005 Apr 15 (UTC)