107 Stories About Chemistry |
In the twentieth century the ninety-second element of the Periodic Table has become just about the most famous element. For it was uranium that started up the first nuclear reactor. It gave men the key to mastery of a fundamentally new type of energy.
And now uranium is produced in large quantities: the world's production is over 40,000 tons a year. So far this is quite sufficient to meet the demands of nuclear power engineering. But strange as it seems, not more than 5 per cent of the uranium produced is utilized directly (according to purpose). The remaining 95 per cent are called waste uranium. It cannot be used directly because it contains too little of the isotope uranium-235, the principal nuclear fuel.
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