Uranium is what kind of element

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.

Many people, when talking about nuclear energy, have only nuclear reactors or perhaps nuclear weapons in mind. Few people realise the extent to which the use of radioisotopes has changed our lives over the last few decades. Using relatively small special-purpose nuclear reactors, it is possible to make a wide range of radioactive materials radioisotopes at low cost.

For this reason the use of artificially-produced radioisotopes has become widespread since the early s, and there are now about 'research' reactors in 56 countries producing them.

These are essentially neutron factories rather than sources of heat. In our daily life we need food, water and good health. Today, radioactive isotopes play an important part in the technologies that provide us with all three. They are produced by bombarding small amounts of particular elements with neutrons. In medicine , radioisotopes are widely used for diagnosis and research.

Radioactive chemical tracers emit gamma radiation which provides diagnostic information about a person's anatomy and the functioning of specific organs. Radiotherapy also employs radioisotopes in the treatment of some illnesses, such as cancer.

About one person in two in the Western world is likely to experience the benefits of nuclear medicine in their lifetime. More powerful gamma sources are used to sterilise syringes, bandages and other medical utensils — gamma sterilisation of equipment is almost universal. In the preservation of food , radioisotopes are used to inhibit the sprouting of root crops after harvesting, to kill parasites and pests, and to control the ripening of stored fruit and vegetables. Irradiated foodstuffs are accepted by world and national health authorities for human consumption in an increasing number of countries.

They include potatoes, onions, dried and fresh fruits, grain and grain products, poultry and some fish. Some prepacked foods can also be irradiated. In the growing of crops and breeding livestock , radioisotopes also play an important role. They are used to produce high yielding, disease-resistant and weather-resistant varieties of crops, to study how fertilisers and insecticides work, and to improve the productivity and health of domestic animals. Industrially , and in mining, they are used to examine welds, to detect leaks, to study the rate of wear of metals, and for on-stream analysis of a wide range of minerals and fuels.

There are many other uses. A radioisotope derived from the plutonium formed in nuclear reactors is used in most household smoke detectors. Radioisotopes are used to detect and analyse pollutants in the environment, and to study the movement of surface water in streams and also of groundwater. There are also other uses for nuclear reactors. About small nuclear reactors power some ships, mostly submarines, but ranging from icebreakers to aircraft carriers.

These can stay at sea for long periods without having to make refuelling stops. In the Russian Arctic where operating conditions are beyond the capability of conventional icebreakers, very powerful nuclear-powered vessels operate year-round, where previously only two months allowed northern access each year.

The heat produced by nuclear reactors can also be used directly rather than for generating electricity. In Sweden, Russia and China, for example, surplus heat is used to heat buildings. Nuclear heat may also be used for a variety of industrial processes such as water desalination. Nuclear desalination is likely to be a major growth area in the next decade. High-temperature heat from nuclear reactors is likely to be employed in some industrial processes in future, especially for making hydrogen.

Both uranium and plutonium were used to make bombs before they became important for making electricity and radioisotopes. The heat generated by the fuel is used to create steam to turn turbines and generate electrical power. In a breeder reactor uranium captures neutrons and undergoes negative beta decay to become plutonium This synthetic, fissionable element can also sustain a chain reaction.

Depleted uranium is uranium that has much less uranium than natural uranium. It is considerably less radioactive than natural uranium. It is a dense metal that can be used as ballast for ships and counterweights for aircraft. It is also used in ammunition and armour. Biological role. Uranium has no known biological role. It is a toxic metal. Natural abundance. Uranium occurs naturally in several minerals such as uranite pitchblende , brannerite and carnotite.

It is also found in phosphate rock and monazite sands. World production of uranium is about 41, tonnes per year. Extracted uranium is converted to the purified oxide, known as yellow-cake. Uranium metal can be prepared by reducing uranium halides with Group 1 or Group 2 metals, or by reducing uranium oxides with calcium or aluminium.

Help text not available for this section currently. Elements and Periodic Table History. In the Middle Ages, the mineral pitchblende uranium oxide, U 3 O 8 sometimes turned up in silver mines, and in Martin Heinrich Klaproth of Berlin investigated it. He dissolved it in nitric acid and precipitated a yellow compound when the solution was neutralised.

He realised it was the oxide of a new element and tried to produce the metal itself by heating the precipitate with charcoal, but failed. The discovery that uranium was radioactive came only in when Henri Becquerel in Paris left a sample of uranium on top of an unexposed photographic plate.

It caused this to become cloudy and he deduced that uranium was giving off invisible rays. Radioactivity had been discovered. Atomic data. Glossary Common oxidation states The oxidation state of an atom is a measure of the degree of oxidation of an atom. Oxidation states and isotopes. Glossary Data for this section been provided by the British Geological Survey. Relative supply risk An integrated supply risk index from 1 very low risk to 10 very high risk.

Recycling rate The percentage of a commodity which is recycled. Substitutability The availability of suitable substitutes for a given commodity. Reserve distribution The percentage of the world reserves located in the country with the largest reserves. Political stability of top producer A percentile rank for the political stability of the top producing country, derived from World Bank governance indicators. Political stability of top reserve holder A percentile rank for the political stability of the country with the largest reserves, derived from World Bank governance indicators.

Supply risk. Relative supply risk 5. Young's modulus A measure of the stiffness of a substance. Shear modulus A measure of how difficult it is to deform a material. Bulk modulus A measure of how difficult it is to compress a substance. Vapour pressure A measure of the propensity of a substance to evaporate.

Pressure and temperature data — advanced. Listen to Uranium Podcast Transcript :. You're listening to Chemistry in its element brought to you by Chemistry World , the magazine of the Royal Society of Chemistry. For Chemistry in its element this week, can you guess what connects boat keels, armour piercing weaponry, beautiful coloured glass that you can track down with a geiger counter and more oxidation states than a chemist can shake a glass rod at.

If not, here's Polly Arnold with the answer. Uranium is certainly one of the most famous, or perhaps I should say infamous, elements. It is the heaviest naturally occurring element. It is actually more abundant in the earth's crust than silver. It is one of eight elements named in honour of celestial objects, but you might not think that uranium deserves to be named after the planet Uranus.

The lustrous black powder that the chemist Klaproth isolated from the mineral pitchblende in - just eight years after Uranus was discovered - was in fact an oxide of uranium. Samples of the metal tarnish rapidly in air, but if the metal is finely divided, it will burst into flames. Uranium sits amongst the actinides, the second shell of metals to fill their f-orbitals with valence electrons, making them large and weighty. Chemically, uranium is fascinating.

Its nucleus is so full of protons and neutrons that it draws its core electron shells in close. This means relativistic effects come into play that affect the electron orbital energies. The inner core s electrons move faster, and are drawn in to the heavy nucleus, shielding it better. So the outer valence orbitals are more shielded and expanded, and can form hybrid molecular orbitals that generated arguments over the precise ordering of bonding energies in the uranyl ion until as recently as this century.

This means that a variety of orbitals can now be combined to make bonds, and from this, some very interesting compounds. In the absence of air, uranium can display a wide range of oxidation states, unlike the lanthanides just above it, and it forms many deeply coloured complexes in its lower oxidation states. The uranium tetrachloride that Peligot reduced is a beautiful grass-green colour, while the triiodide is midnight-blue.

Because of this, some regard it as a 'big transition metal'. Most of these compounds are hard to make and characterise as they react so quickly with air and water, but there is still scope for big breakthroughs in this area of chemistry. The ramifications of relativistic effects on the energies of the bonding electrons has generated much excitement for us synthetic chemists, but unfortunately many headaches for experimental and computational chemists who are trying to understand how better to deal with our nuclear waste legacy.

In the environment, uranium invariably exists as a dioxide salt called the uranyl ion, in which it is tightly sandwiched between two oxygen atoms, in its highest oxidation state. Uranyl salts are notoriously unreactive at the oxygen atoms, and about half of all known uranium compounds contain this dioxo motif.

One of the most interesting facets of this area of uranium chemistry has emerged in the last couple of years: A few research groups have found ways to stabilise the singly reduced uranyl ion, a fragment which was traditionally regarded as too unstable to isolate. This ion is now beginning to show reactivity at its oxygen atoms, and may be able to teach us much about uranium's more radioactive and more reactive man-made sisters, neptunium and plutonium - these are also present in nuclear waste, but difficult to work with in greater than milligram quantities.

Outside the chemistry lab, uranium is best known for its role as a nuclear fuel. It has been at the forefront of many chemists' consciousness over recent months due to the international debate on the role that nuclear power can play in a future as a low-carbon energy source, and whether our new generations of safer and efficient power stations are human-proof.

To make the fuel that is used to power reactors to generate electricity, naturally occurring uranium, which is almost all U, is enriched with the isotope U which is normally only present in about 0. The leftovers, called depleted uranium, or DU, have a much-reduced U content of only about 0. Because it is so dense, DU is also used in shielding, in the keels of boats and more controversially, in the noses of armour-piercing weapons.

The metal has the desirable ability to self-sharpen as it pierces a target, rather than mushrooming upon impact the way conventional tungsten carbide tipped weapons do. Critics of DU weaponry claim it can accumulate around battlefields. Because uranium is primarily an alpha-emitter, its radioactivity only really becomes a problem if it gets inside the body, where it can accumulate in the kidneys, causing damage.

However, uranium is also a heavy metal, and its chemical toxicity is of greater importance - it is approximately as toxic as lead or mercury. But uranium doesn't deserve it's image as one of the periodic table's nasties. Much of the internal heat of the earth is considered to be due to the decay of natural uranium and thorium deposits.

Perhaps those looking to improve the public image of nuclear power should demand the relabelling of geothermal ground-source heat pumps as nuclear? The reputation of this element would also be significantly better if only uranium glass was the element's most publicly known face.

In the same way that lead salts are added to glass to make sparkling crystal glassware, uranyl salts give a very beautiful and translucent yellow-green colour to glass, although glassmakers have experimented to produce a wide range of gem-like colours. An archaeological dig near Naples in unearthed a small green mosaic tile dated back to 79 AD, which was reported to contain uranium, but these claims have not been verified. However in the early th and early 20 th century it was used widely in containers and wine-glasses.

If you think that you own a piece, you can check with a Geiger counter, or by looking for the characteristic green fluorescence of the uranium when held under a UV-lamp. Pieces are generally regarded as safe to drink from, but you are advised not to drill holes in them, or wear them. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium has the highest atomic weight 19 kg m of all naturally occurring elements.

Uranium occurs naturally in low concentrations in soil, rock and water, and is commercially extracted from uranium-bearing minerals such as uraninite. Uranium ore can be mined from open pits or underground excavations. The ore can then be crushed and treated at a mill to separate the valuable uranium from the ore. Uranium may also be dissolved directly from the ore deposits in the ground in-situ leaching and pumped to the surface. Uranium mined from the earth is stored, handled, and sold as uranium oxide concentrate U 3 O 8.

Uranium was discovered in by Martin Klaproth, a German chemist, who isolated an oxide of uranium while analyzing pitchblende samples from the Joachimsthal silver mines in the former Kingdom of Bohemia, located in the present day Czech Republic.