General Electric Co. (GE) is in preliminary talks with EDF over the possible sale of GE Steam Power's nuclear activities in France...
TSX-listed Denison Mines Corp. today announced that the Wheeler River Joint Venture has approved the initiation of an independent ...
Westinghouse Electric Co. and NT-Engineering LLC Co. have signed a Memorandum of Cooperation to implement maintenance optimization...
'Digital' mining has started at the Khokhlovskoye uranium deposit in Russia, Rosatom subsidiaries announced. Operators have full i...
Russia will gradually decommission Soviet nuclear power units built in the 1970s and replace them by about 15 units by 2035, said ...
Uranium Primer - Uranium as Nuclear Fuel
Uranium in its naturally occurring form consists primarily of two “isotopes” with the same chemical characteristics, but different atomic weights due to the differing number of neutrons in their nuclei. Both isotopes have 92 protons in their nuclei (and, thus, the same chemical characteristics), but the lighter isotope (atomic weight of 235) has 143 neutrons and the heavier isotope has 146 neutrons. The lighter isotope, U-235, comprises only 0.7% of natural uranium, but it is the only isotope that can actually undergo fission and, thus, produce energy. The other isotope, U-238, comprises the remaining 99.3% of natural uranium. In order to be useful as fuel in the most prevalent nuclear power technologies, the percentage of U-235 must be increased to the level of 2-5% U-235, a process called “enrichment.” Enrichment is a technically difficult process, the essence of which is highly secret because it is the same process used to produce some nuclear weapons material. (Nuclear weapons can be made from uranium of approximately 90% U-235.)
