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Concept
Uranium ore
Summary
Uranium ore deposits are economically recoverable concentrations of uranium within the Earth's crust. Uranium is one of the most common elements in the Earth's crust, being 40 times more common than silver and 500 times more common than gold. It can be found almost everywhere in rock, soil, rivers, and oceans. The challenge for commercial uranium extraction is to find those areas where the concentrations are adequate to form an economically viable deposit. The primary use for uranium obtained from mining is in fuel for nuclear reactors.
Globally, the distribution of uranium ore deposits is widespread on all continents, with the largest deposits found in Australia, Kazakhstan, and Canada. To date, high-grade deposits are only found in the Athabasca Basin region of Canada.
Uranium deposits are generally classified based on host rocks, structural setting, and mineralogy of the deposit. The most widely used classification scheme was developed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and subdivides deposits into 15 categories.
TOC
Uranium
Uranium is a silvery-gray metallic weakly radioactive chemical element. It has the chemical symbol U and atomic number 92. The most common isotopes in natural uranium are 238U (99.27%) and 235U (0.72%). All uranium isotopes present in natural uranium are radioactive and fissionable, and 235U is fissile (will support a neutron-mediated chain reaction). Uranium, thorium, and one radioactive isotope of potassium (40K potassium-40) as well as their decay products are the main elements contributing to natural terrestrial radioactivity. Cosmogenic radionuclides are of less importance but unlike the aforementioned primordial radionuclides, which date back to the formation of the planet and have since slowly decayed away, they are replenished at roughly the same rate they decay by the bombardment of earth with cosmic rays.
Uranium has the highest atomic weight of the naturally occurring elements and is approximately 70% denser than lead, but not as dense as tungsten, gold, platinum, iridium, or osmium.
Official source
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