Protactinium abundance

As the parent of actinium in this series it was named protoactinium, shortened in 1949 to protactinium. Because of its low natural abundance its chemistry was obscure until 1960 when A. G. Maddock and co-workers at the UK Atomic Energy Authority worked up about 130g from 60 tons of sludge which had accumulated during the extraction of uranium from UO2 ores. It is from this sample, distributed to numerous laboratories throughout the world, that the bulk of our knowledge of the element s chemistry was gleaned. 

Edmonds HN, Moran SB, Hoff JA, Smith JN, Edwards RL (1998) Protactinium-231 and Thorium-230 abundances and high scavenging rates in the Western Arctic ocean. Science 280 405-407 Edwards RL, Gallup CD, Cheng H (2003) Uranium-series dating of marine and lacustrine carbonates. Rev Mineral Geochem 52 363-405... 

Regelous et al have reported ou the use of the isotope dilutiou techuique (using a Pa spike with a half-life of 26.97 days) for the quantitative measurement of 20 fg of protactinium in silicate rocks after chemical separation of the actinide from the rock matrix by MC-ICP-MS (Neptune, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Bremen - equipped with uiue Faraday detectors, oue secondary electron multiplier and a retarding potential quadrupole for high abundance sensitivity measurements). 

We have already discussed the history of discovery of two natural radioactive elements, that is, uranium and thorium, in Chapter 4. These elements can fairly easily be found in minerals with chemical analysis since their content is sufficiently high. Other natural radioactive elements (polonium, radon, radium, actinium, and protactinium) are among the least abundant elements on Earth. Moreover, they exist in nature only because they are the products of radioactive transformations of uranium and thorium. 

Uranium-238 is the most abundant naturally occurring isotope of uranium. It undergoes radioactive decay to form other isotopes. In the first three steps of this decay, uranium-238 is converted to thorium-234, which is converted to protactinium-234, which is converted to uranium-234. Assume that only one particle in addition to the daughter is produced in each step, and use equations for the decay processes to determine the type of radiation emitted during each step. 

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