UCOR has spent years cleaning up debris in Alpha-2 to get ready for demolition. Because the demolition process is an open-air demolition, the clean-up process has involved getting rid of all ...

In uranium isotopes, the number after the "U" relates to the combined number of protons and neutrons. For example, there are 92 protons in uranium and 143 neutrons in the U-235 isotope: so 92+143 ...

Unenriched, or natural, uranium contains about 0.7% of the fissile uranium-235 (U-235) isotope. ("Fissile" means it's capable of undergoing the fission process by which energy is produced in a nuclear ...

“Overnight, we deepened the strike on the nuclear site in Isfahan and in western Iran. On the screen, you can see the site where reconversion of enriched uranium takes place. This is the stage ...

So far, strikes on Iran's facilities have created limited chemical and radiological hazards. Experts say that's not likely to change even if the U.S. uses a big bomb.

If the U.S. does drop a powerful "bunker buster" bomb on a suspected underground nuclear weapons site in Iran, experts in radiation hazards see little risk of widespread contamination. The site in ...

The heavier uranium-238 moves to the edges of the centrifuge, leaving the uranium-235 in the middle. This is only so effective, so the spinning process is done over and over again, building up the ...

Natural uranium is composed of uranium 238 (U-238), which makes up 99.3 per cent, and uranium 235 (U-235), the remaining 0.7pc. Only U-235, called “fissile uranium”, can be used for nuclear fuel.

Only 0.72% of it is uranium-235 with 92 protons and 143 neutrons (the remaining 0.01% are other isotopes). For nuclear power reactors or weapons, we need to change the isotope proportions.

The difference between uranium-238 and uranium-235 When we dig uranium out of the ground, 99.27 per cent of it is uranium-238, which has 92 protons and 146 neutrons.

The result is a nuclear explosion. By contrast, the more common isotope, U-238, usually absorbs slow neutrons without splitting and cannot drive such a devastating chain reaction.