History of chemistry element among the fractions that resulted. Working with the mineral pitchblende, the pair discovered a new radioactive element in 1898. They named the element polonium, after Marie's native country of Poland. On December 21, 1898, the Curies detected the presence of another radioactive material in the pitchblende. They presented this finding to the French Academy of Sciences on December 26, proposing that the new element be called radium. The Curies then went to work isolating polonium and radium from naturally occurring compounds to prove that they were new elements. In 1902, the Curies announced that they had produced a decigram
Uranium ore in the Athabasca Basin region of Canada. Uranium is generally used to generate nuclear fuel. Uranium deposits are generally classified based on host rocks, structural setting, and mineralogy of the deposit. The most widely used classification scheme was developed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and subdivides deposits into 15 categories. Uranium is a silvery-gray metallic weakly radioactive chemical element. It has the chemical symbol U and atomic number 92. The most common isotopes in natural uranium are U (99.27%) and U (0.72%). All uranium isotopes present in natural uranium are radioactive and fissionable, and U is fissile (will