Uranium isotopes, decay series

Table 3-4. Uranium Isotope Decay Series Showing the Decay Products of the Naturally Occurring Isotopes of Uranium...

Uranium and Thorium Isotope Decay Series Showing the Sources and Decay Products of... 

Radioactive decay usually does not immediately lead to a stable end product, but to other unstable nuclei that form a decay series (Kiefer 1990). The most important examples of unstable nuclei are started by very heavy, naturally occurring nuclei. Because the mass number changes only with a decay, all members of a series can be classified according to their mass numbers (see the uranium-238 decay series in Figure 32.2). A total of three natural decay series — formed at the birth of our planet — are named after their parent isotope Th, and (Figure 32.3). Several shorter decay series also exist. For example, Sr decays with a Tb 1/2 of 28 years by [3 emission to °Y, which in turn disintegrates (P emission) with a Tb 1/2 of 64 h to the stable °Zr (Kiefer 1990). Other examples of known radionuclides since the Earth s origin include " °K and Rb. In hazard assessments, all members of a decay series must be considered. 

Figure 1 The natural uranium-thorium decay series, colored according to particle reactivity. The arrows represent decay with the changes in atomic number (Z) and number of nucleons (N) indicated. All three series end with a stable lead isotope.

Clay Mineralogy. Hydrothermal Vent Deposits. Platinum Group Elements and their Isotopes in the Ocean. Pore Water Chemistry. Rare Earth Elements and their Isotopes in the Ocean. River Inputs. Tracers of Ocean Productivity. Transition Metals and Heavy Metal Speciation. Uranium-Thorium Decay Series in the Oceans Overview. 

FIGURE 13.5 The uranium-238 decay series. Radium (Ra) and polonium (Po), the two elements discovered by Marie Curie, are part of this series. Radon (Rn), the radioactive gas of environmental concern, is generated as shown here wherever rocks contain uranium. Lead-206 is not radioactive. The half-lives of the isotopes in this decay series vary considerably. Uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, whereas the half-life of lead-210 is 22 years. Some radioactive elements, like thallium-210, have half-lives of only a few minutes. 

The transmutations of the uranium-238 decay series are charted in Figure 2.7. Locate the parent nuclide, uranium-238, on the chart. As the nucleus of uranium-238 decays, it emits an alpha particle. The mass number of the nuclide, and thus the vertical position on the graph, decreases by four. The atomic number, and thus the horizontal position, decreases by two. The daughter nuclide is an isotope of thorium. 

Polonium, completing the elements of Group 16, is radioactive and one of the rarest naturally occurring elements (about 3 x 10 " % of the Earth s crust). The main natural source of polonium is uranium ores, which contain about lO g of Po per ton. The isotope 210-Po, occurring in uranium (and also thorium) minerals as an intermediate in the radioactive decay series, was discovered by M. S. Curie in 1898. 

The uranium and thorium decay-series contain radioactive isotopes of many elements (in particular, U, Th, Pa, Ra and Rn). The varied geochemical properties of these elements cause nuclides within the chain to be fractionated in different geological environments, while the varied half-lives of the nuclides allows investigation of processes occurring on time scales from days to 10 years. U-series measurements have therefore revolutionized the Earth Sciences by offering some of the only quantitative constraints on time scales applicable to the physical processes that take place on the Earth. 

In this chapter we discuss improvements documented in the literature over the past decade in these areas and others. Chemical procedures, decay-counting spectroscopy, and mass spectrometric techniques published prior to 1992 were previously discussed by Lally (1992), Ivanovich and Murray (1992), and Chen et al. (1992). Because ICPMS methods were not discussed in preceding reviews and have become more commonly used in the past decade, we also include some theoretical discussion of ICPMS techniques and their variants. We also primarily focus our discussion of analytical developments on the longer-lived isotopes of uranium, thorium, protactinium, and radium in the uranium and thorium decay series, as these have been more widely applied in geochemistry and geochronology. 

Oversby VM, Gast PW (1968) Lead isotope composition and uranium decay series disequilibrimn in recent volcanic rocks. Earth Planet Sci Lett 5 199-206... 

O Hara MJ (1968) The bearing of phase equilibria studies in synthetic and natural systems on the origin and evolution of basic and ultrabasic rocks. Earth Sci Rev 4 69-133 O Nions RK, McKenzie D (1993) Estimates of mantle thorium/uranium ratios from Th, U and Pb isotope abundances in basaltic melts. Phil Trans Royal Soc 342 65-77 Oversby V, Gast PW (1968) Lead isotope compositions and uranium decay series disequilibrium in reeent volcanic rocks. Earth Planet Sci Lett 5 199-206... 

Natural lead, a metallic element, is a mixture of the following four isotopes lead-204, lead-206, lead-207, and lead-208. Only lead-204 is a primordial isotope of nonradiogenic origin all the others are radiogenic, each isotope being the end product of one of the radioactive decay series of isotopes of thorium or uranium, namely, uranium-238, uranium-235, and thorium-232 the decay series of the uranium isotopes are listed in Figure 12 ... 

FIGURE 3.4. Isotopes of the uranium and thorium decay series. 

---