Uranium how many electrons

Uranium occurs naturally in several minerals such as uranite pitchblende , brannerite and carnotite. It is also found in phosphate rock and monazite sands. World production of uranium is about 41, tonnes per year. Extracted uranium is converted to the purified oxide, known as yellow-cake. Uranium metal can be prepared by reducing uranium halides with Group 1 or Group 2 metals, or by reducing uranium oxides with calcium or aluminium. Help text not available for this section currently.

Elements and Periodic Table History. In the Middle Ages, the mineral pitchblende uranium oxide, U 3 O 8 sometimes turned up in silver mines, and in Martin Heinrich Klaproth of Berlin investigated it. He dissolved it in nitric acid and precipitated a yellow compound when the solution was neutralised.

He realised it was the oxide of a new element and tried to produce the metal itself by heating the precipitate with charcoal, but failed. The discovery that uranium was radioactive came only in when Henri Becquerel in Paris left a sample of uranium on top of an unexposed photographic plate.

It caused this to become cloudy and he deduced that uranium was giving off invisible rays. Radioactivity had been discovered. Atomic data. Glossary Common oxidation states The oxidation state of an atom is a measure of the degree of oxidation of an atom.

Oxidation states and isotopes. Glossary Data for this section been provided by the British Geological Survey. Relative supply risk An integrated supply risk index from 1 very low risk to 10 very high risk. Recycling rate The percentage of a commodity which is recycled.

Substitutability The availability of suitable substitutes for a given commodity. Reserve distribution The percentage of the world reserves located in the country with the largest reserves. Political stability of top producer A percentile rank for the political stability of the top producing country, derived from World Bank governance indicators.

Political stability of top reserve holder A percentile rank for the political stability of the country with the largest reserves, derived from World Bank governance indicators. Supply risk. Relative supply risk 5. Young's modulus A measure of the stiffness of a substance.

Shear modulus A measure of how difficult it is to deform a material. Bulk modulus A measure of how difficult it is to compress a substance. Vapour pressure A measure of the propensity of a substance to evaporate. Pressure and temperature data — advanced. Listen to Uranium Podcast Transcript :.

You're listening to Chemistry in its element brought to you by Chemistry World , the magazine of the Royal Society of Chemistry. For Chemistry in its element this week, can you guess what connects boat keels, armour piercing weaponry, beautiful coloured glass that you can track down with a geiger counter and more oxidation states than a chemist can shake a glass rod at. If not, here's Polly Arnold with the answer. Uranium is certainly one of the most famous, or perhaps I should say infamous, elements.

It is the heaviest naturally occurring element. It is actually more abundant in the earth's crust than silver. It is one of eight elements named in honour of celestial objects, but you might not think that uranium deserves to be named after the planet Uranus.

The lustrous black powder that the chemist Klaproth isolated from the mineral pitchblende in - just eight years after Uranus was discovered - was in fact an oxide of uranium. Samples of the metal tarnish rapidly in air, but if the metal is finely divided, it will burst into flames. Uranium sits amongst the actinides, the second shell of metals to fill their f-orbitals with valence electrons, making them large and weighty.

Chemically, uranium is fascinating. Its nucleus is so full of protons and neutrons that it draws its core electron shells in close. This means relativistic effects come into play that affect the electron orbital energies.

The inner core s electrons move faster, and are drawn in to the heavy nucleus, shielding it better. So the outer valence orbitals are more shielded and expanded, and can form hybrid molecular orbitals that generated arguments over the precise ordering of bonding energies in the uranyl ion until as recently as this century.

This means that a variety of orbitals can now be combined to make bonds, and from this, some very interesting compounds.

In the absence of air, uranium can display a wide range of oxidation states, unlike the lanthanides just above it, and it forms many deeply coloured complexes in its lower oxidation states. The uranium tetrachloride that Peligot reduced is a beautiful grass-green colour, while the triiodide is midnight-blue.

Because of this, some regard it as a 'big transition metal'. Most of these compounds are hard to make and characterise as they react so quickly with air and water, but there is still scope for big breakthroughs in this area of chemistry.

The ramifications of relativistic effects on the energies of the bonding electrons has generated much excitement for us synthetic chemists, but unfortunately many headaches for experimental and computational chemists who are trying to understand how better to deal with our nuclear waste legacy.

In the environment, uranium invariably exists as a dioxide salt called the uranyl ion, in which it is tightly sandwiched between two oxygen atoms, in its highest oxidation state. Uranyl salts are notoriously unreactive at the oxygen atoms, and about half of all known uranium compounds contain this dioxo motif.

One of the most interesting facets of this area of uranium chemistry has emerged in the last couple of years: A few research groups have found ways to stabilise the singly reduced uranyl ion, a fragment which was traditionally regarded as too unstable to isolate. This ion is now beginning to show reactivity at its oxygen atoms, and may be able to teach us much about uranium's more radioactive and more reactive man-made sisters, neptunium and plutonium - these are also present in nuclear waste, but difficult to work with in greater than milligram quantities.

Outside the chemistry lab, uranium is best known for its role as a nuclear fuel. It has been at the forefront of many chemists' consciousness over recent months due to the international debate on the role that nuclear power can play in a future as a low-carbon energy source, and whether our new generations of safer and efficient power stations are human-proof. To make the fuel that is used to power reactors to generate electricity, naturally occurring uranium, which is almost all U, is enriched with the isotope U which is normally only present in about 0.

The leftovers, called depleted uranium, or DU, have a much-reduced U content of only about 0. Because it is so dense, DU is also used in shielding, in the keels of boats and more controversially, in the noses of armour-piercing weapons. The metal has the desirable ability to self-sharpen as it pierces a target, rather than mushrooming upon impact the way conventional tungsten carbide tipped weapons do. Critics of DU weaponry claim it can accumulate around battlefields. Because uranium is primarily an alpha-emitter, its radioactivity only really becomes a problem if it gets inside the body, where it can accumulate in the kidneys, causing damage.

However, uranium is also a heavy metal, and its chemical toxicity is of greater importance - it is approximately as toxic as lead or mercury. But uranium doesn't deserve it's image as one of the periodic table's nasties. Much of the internal heat of the earth is considered to be due to the decay of natural uranium and thorium deposits. Perhaps those looking to improve the public image of nuclear power should demand the relabelling of geothermal ground-source heat pumps as nuclear?

The reputation of this element would also be significantly better if only uranium glass was the element's most publicly known face. In the same way that lead salts are added to glass to make sparkling crystal glassware, uranyl salts give a very beautiful and translucent yellow-green colour to glass, although glassmakers have experimented to produce a wide range of gem-like colours.

An archaeological dig near Naples in unearthed a small green mosaic tile dated back to 79 AD, which was reported to contain uranium, but these claims have not been verified. However in the early th and early 20 th century it was used widely in containers and wine-glasses. If you think that you own a piece, you can check with a Geiger counter, or by looking for the characteristic green fluorescence of the uranium when held under a UV-lamp.

Pieces are generally regarded as safe to drink from, but you are advised not to drill holes in them, or wear them. Fair enough. Or inadvertently eating it too, presumably. That was Edinburgh University chemist Polly Arnold explaining the softer side of the armour piercing element Uranium. Next week Andrea Sella will be introducing us to some crystals with intriguing properties. You HAVE to see this. He beckoned me into a hallway. As the crystals caught the light from the new fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling, the pink colour seemed to deepen and brighten up.

We moved the crystals back into the sunlight and the colour faded again, and moving the crystals back and forth they glowed and dimmed in magical fashion. But what did they contain? Well, the answer's Erbium and you can hear all about it in next week's Chemistry in its element. I'm Chris Smith, thank you for listening and goodbye.

Total number of protons in the nucleus is called the atomic number of the atom and is given the symbol Z. The total number of neutrons in the nucleus of an atom is called the neutron number of the atom and is given the symbol N. For stable elements, there is usually a variety of stable isotopes. Isotopes are nuclides that have the same atomic number and are therefore the same element, but differ in the number of neutrons.

Mass numbers of typical isotopes of Uranium are , All isotopes are very slightly radioactive. Other isotopes occur only in traces. The number of electrons in an electrically-neutral atom is the same as the number of protons in the nucleus. Therefore, the number of electrons in neutral atom of Uranium is Each electron is influenced by the electric fields produced by the positive nuclear charge and the other Z — 1 negative electrons in the atom. Since the number of electrons and their arrangement are responsible for the chemical behavior of atoms, the atomic number identifies the various chemical elements.

The configuration of these electrons follows from the principles of quantum mechanics. In the periodic table, the elements are listed in order of increasing atomic number Z.

Uranium dioxide is a ceramic refractory uranium compound, in many cases used as a nuclear fuel. Uranium dioxide is a black semiconducting solid with very low thermal conductivity. On the other hand the uranium dioxide has a very high melting point and has well known behavior. A proton is one of the subatomic particles that make up matter.

In the universe, protons are abundant, making up about half of all visible matter. The proton has a mean square radius of about 0.

The protons exist in the nuclei of typical atoms, along with their neutral counterparts, the neutrons. Neutrons and protons, commonly called nucleons , are bound together in the atomic nucleus, where they account for Research in high-energy particle physics in the 20th century revealed that neither the neutron nor the proton is not the smallest building block of matter.

A neutron is one of the subatomic particles that make up matter. In the universe, neutrons are abundant, making up more than half of all visible matter. Why uranium release can be harmful Contact, and therefore this exposure, can occur if you inhale, eat or drink the pollutant, or if it touches your skin.

However, since uranium is radioactive, it can also be exposed to nearby radiation. Why is uranium dangerous? Since uranium breaks down into alpha particles, external exposure to uranium is not as dangerous as exposure to other radioactive elements because the skin blocks alpha particles.

However, ingesting high levels of uranium can have serious health effects, such as bone or liver cancer. Why is uranium unstable? This radioactive metal is unique in that one of its isotopes, uranium , is the only natural isotope capable of withstanding a nuclear fission reaction. Uranium is naturally radioactive: the nucleus is unstable, so the element is in constant decay and seeks a more stable arrangement.

How much does uranium cost? Is uranium of human origin? Uranium is the heaviest natural element available in large quantities. The heavier transuranic elements are of human origin or are found only in trace amounts as activation products in uranium ore deposits.

Which element has the atomic number 92? Uranium Is crude uranium dangerous?