Uranium tile Uranium tile Uranium tiles have been used in the ceramics industry for many centuries, as uranium oxide makes an excellent ceramic glaze, and is reasonably abundant on the earth's crust. Not long after Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity in uranium salts, Madame Curie discovered both polonium and radium as two new radioactive elements also present with uranium. The relatively high specific activity and moderate half-life of 1,600 years of Ra-226, the main radioisotope of radium found in uranium ore, made for a material which when mixed with a phosphor allowed for a glow-in-the-dark substance. Thus, in addition to its medical usage,
Uranium-238 control. Around 99.284% of natural uranium's mass is uranium-238, which has a half-life of 1.41 seconds (4.468 years, or 4.468 billion years). Due to its natural abundance and half-life relative to other radioactive elements, U produces ~40% of the radioactive heat produced within the Earth. U decay contributes 6 electron anti-neutrinos per decay (1 per beta decay), resulting in a large detectable geoneutrino signal when decays occur within the Earth. The decay of U to daughter isotopes is extensively used in radiometric dating, particularly for material older than ~ 1 million years. Depleted uranium has an even higher concentration of