What are depleted uranium?

Answer 1

About 95 percent of the depleted uranium produced is stored as uranium hexafluoride, a crystalline solid, (D)UF6, in steel cylinders in open air storage yards close to enrichment plants. Each cylinder holds up to 12.7 tonnes (or 14 US tons) of UF6. In the U.S. 560,000 tonnes of depleted UF6 had accumulated by 1993. In 2008, 686,500 tonnes in 57,122 storage cylinders were located near Portsmouth, Ohio and Paducah, Kentucky.

Answer 2

Depleted uranium has a number of uses.

One property that makes it very useful is its density, which is about 1.67 times that of lead, or about 19 times that of water. This makes it useful for weights, such as the trim weights used in aircraft. It also makes it useful for military ammunition, because its density allows the force of impact to focus on a smaller area than would otherwise be possible. It also makes it useful to have uranium included in the armor of some military vehicles, such as tanks, where it can be put in sheets between plates of steel.

Since depleted uranium is very weakly radioactive and is effective for stopping more the dangerous ionizing radiation of gamma rays, it is used to shield people from gamma rays of radiography cameras.

Uranium, later depleted uranium, was used for over a hundred years as a coloring agent for glass and ceramics, certainly as late as 2000, and perhaps later. It has been used to maker false teeth appear more real. It is used as a stain for electron microscopy.

Depleted uranium is used in reagents for analytical chemistry.

Depleted uranium is about 99.75% made up of U-238, with a half life of about 4.5 billion years, with the remainder being nearly all U-235, with a half life of 700 million years. There are traces of U-234, with a half life of 246,000 years. Uranium is considered to be less toxic than arsenic or Mercury.

Answer 3

Depleted uranium is uranium containing less than 0,2 % the isotope 235U.