Radiometric dating, radioactive dating or radioisotope dating is a technique which is used to date materials such as rocks or carbon, in which trace radioactive impurities were selectively incorporated when they were formed. The method compares the abundance of a naturally occurring radioactive isotope within the material to the abundance of its decay products, which form at a known constant rate of decay. The use of radiometric dating was first published in 1907 by Bertram Boltwood and is now the principal source of information about the absolute age of rocks and other geological features, including the age of fossilized life forms or the age of Earth itself, and can also be used to date a wide range of natural and man-made materials.
In nuclear engineering, fissile material is material that can undergo nuclear fission when struck by a neutron of low energy. A self-sustaining thermal chain reaction can only be achieved with fissile material. The predominant neutron energy in a system may be typified by either slow neutrons or fast neutrons. Fissile material can be used to fuel thermal-neutron reactors, fast-neutron reactors and nuclear explosives.
In nuclear science a decay chain refers to the predictable series of radioactive disintegrations undergone by the nuclei of certain unstable chemical elements.
Uranium-238 is the most common isotope of uranium found in nature, with a relative abundance of 99%. Unlike uranium-235, it is non-fissile, which means it cannot sustain a chain reaction in a thermal-neutron reactor. However, it is fissionable by fast neutrons, and is fertile, meaning it can be transmuted to fissile plutonium-239. 238U cannot support a chain reaction because inelastic scattering reduces neutron energy below the range where fast fission of one or more next-generation nuclei is probable. Doppler broadening of 238U's neutron absorption resonances, increasing absorption as fuel temperature increases, is also an essential negative feedback mechanism for reactor control.
Polonium-210 (210Po, Po-210, historically radium F) is an isotope of polonium. It undergoes alpha decay to stable 206Pb with a half-life of 138.376 days (about 4+1⁄2 months), the longest half-life of all naturally occurring polonium isotopes (210–218Po). First identified in 1898, and also marking the discovery of the element polonium, 210Po is generated in the decay chain of uranium-238 and radium-226. 210Po is a prominent contaminant in the environment, mostly affecting seafood and tobacco. Its extreme toxicity is attributed to intense radioactivity, mostly due to alpha particles, which easily cause radiation damage, including cancer in surrounding tissue. The specific activity of 210
Po is 166 TBq/g, i.e., 1.66 × 1014 Bq/g. At the same time, 210Po is not readily detected by common radiation detectors, because its gamma rays have a very low energy. Therefore, 210
Po can be considered as a quasi-pure alpha emitter.
Uranium–thorium dating, also called thorium-230 dating, uranium-series disequilibrium dating or uranium-series dating, is a radiometric dating technique established in the 1960s which has been used since the 1970s to determine the age of calcium carbonate materials such as speleothem or coral. Unlike other commonly used radiometric dating techniques such as rubidium–strontium or uranium–lead dating, the uranium-thorium technique does not measure accumulation of a stable end-member decay product. Instead, it calculates an age from the degree to which secular equilibrium has been restored between the radioactive isotope thorium-230 and its radioactive parent uranium-234 within a sample.
Uranium-234 is an isotope of uranium. In natural uranium and in uranium ore, 234U occurs as an indirect decay product of uranium-238, but it makes up only 0.0055% of the raw uranium because its half-life of just 245,500 years is only about 1/18,000 as long as that of 238U. Thus the ratio of 234
U to 238
U in a natural sample is equivalent to the ratio of their half-lives. The primary path of production of 234U via nuclear decay is as follows: uranium-238 nuclei emit an alpha particle to become thorium-234. Next, with a short half-life, 234Th nuclei emit a beta particle to become protactinium-234 (234Pa), or more likely a nuclear isomer denoted 234mPa. Finally, 234Pa or 234mPa nuclei emit another beta particle to become 234U nuclei.
Uranium–uranium dating is a radiometric dating technique which compares two isotopes of uranium (U) in a sample: uranium-234 (234U) and uranium-238 (238U). It is one of several radiometric dating techniques exploiting the uranium radioactive decay series, in which 238U undergoes 14 alpha and beta decay events on the way to the stable isotope 206Pb. Other dating techniques using this decay series include uranium–thorium dating and uranium–lead dating.
Uranium–lead dating, abbreviated U–Pb dating, is one of the oldest and most refined of the radiometric dating schemes. It can be used to date rocks that formed and crystallised from about 1 million years to over 4.5 billion years ago with routine precisions in the 0.1–1 percent range.
Uranium (92U) is a naturally occurring radioactive element (radioelement) with no stable isotopes. It has two primordial isotopes, uranium-238 and uranium-235, that have long half-lives and are found in appreciable quantity in Earth's crust. The decay product uranium-234 is also found. Other isotopes such as uranium-233 have been produced in breeder reactors. In addition to isotopes found in nature or nuclear reactors, many isotopes with far shorter half-lives have been produced, ranging from 214U to 242U. The standard atomic weight of natural uranium is 238.02891(3).
Protactinium (91Pa) has no stable isotopes. The four naturally occurring isotopes allow a standard atomic weight to be given.
Thorium (90Th) has seven naturally occurring isotopes but none are stable. One isotope, 232Th, is relatively stable, with a half-life of 1.405×1010 years, considerably longer than the age of the Earth, and even slightly longer than the generally accepted age of the universe. This isotope makes up nearly all natural thorium, so thorium was considered to be mononuclidic. However, in 2013, IUPAC reclassified thorium as binuclidic, due to large amounts of 230Th in deep seawater. Thorium has a characteristic terrestrial isotopic composition and thus a standard atomic weight can be given.
Radium (88Ra) has no stable or nearly stable isotopes, and thus a standard atomic weight cannot be given. The longest lived, and most common, isotope of radium is 226Ra with a half-life of 1600 years. 226Ra occurs in the decay chain of 238U. Radium has 34 known isotopes from 201Ra to 234Ra.
Lead (82Pb) has four observationally stable isotopes: 204Pb, 206Pb, 207Pb, 208Pb. Lead-204 is entirely a primordial nuclide and is not a radiogenic nuclide. The three isotopes lead-206, lead-207, and lead-208 represent the ends of three decay chains: the uranium series, the actinium series, and the thorium series, respectively; a fourth decay chain, the neptunium series, terminates with the thallium isotope 205Tl. The three series terminating in lead represent the decay chain products of long-lived primordial 238U, 235U, and 232Th. Each isotope also occurs, to some extent, as primordial isotopes that were made in supernovae, rather than radiogenically as daughter products. The fixed ratio of lead-204 to the primordial amounts of the other lead isotopes may be used as the baseline to estimate the extra amounts of radiogenic lead present in rocks as a result of decay from uranium and thorium.
In nuclear physics, the valley of stability is a characterization of the stability of nuclides to radioactivity based on their binding energy. Nuclides are composed of protons and neutrons. The shape of the valley refers to the profile of binding energy as a function of the numbers of neutrons and protons, with the lowest part of the valley corresponding to the region of most stable nuclei. The line of stable nuclides down the center of the valley of stability is known as the line of beta stability. The sides of the valley correspond to increasing instability to beta decay. The decay of a nuclide becomes more energetically favorable the further it is from the line of beta stability. The boundaries of the valley correspond to the nuclear drip lines, where nuclides become so unstable they emit single protons or single neutrons. Regions of instability within the valley at high atomic number also include radioactive decay by alpha radiation or spontaneous fission. The shape of the valley is roughly an elongated paraboloid corresponding to the nuclide binding energies as a function of neutron and atomic numbers.
Uranium-236 is an isotope of uranium that is neither fissile with thermal neutrons, nor very good fertile material, but is generally considered a nuisance and long-lived radioactive waste. It is found in spent nuclear fuel and in the reprocessed uranium made from spent nuclear fuel.
Lead–lead dating is a method for dating geological samples, normally based on 'whole-rock' samples of material such as granite. For most dating requirements it has been superseded by uranium–lead dating, but in certain specialized situations it is more important than U–Pb dating.
In geochemistry, geophysics and nuclear physics, primordial nuclides, also known as primordial isotopes, are nuclides found on Earth that have existed in their current form since before Earth was formed. Primordial nuclides were present in the interstellar medium from which the solar system was formed, and were formed in, or after, the Big Bang, by nucleosynthesis in stars and supernovae followed by mass ejection, by cosmic ray spallation, and potentially from other processes. They are the stable nuclides plus the long-lived fraction of radionuclides surviving in the primordial solar nebula through planet accretion until the present; 286 such nuclides are known.
A radiogenic nuclide is a nuclide that is produced by a process of radioactive decay. It may itself be radioactive or stable.
