What makes Uranium-235 ideal for nuclear fission? Why not use another element all together?
In: Physics
A uranium ore is used that is made up for different types of uranium, including u-235. If I recall something like 5% or less of the uranium in the ore is of the 235 variety.
To answer you question more specifically, every element and even every isotope of each element (say u-235 vs u-238) is stable or unstable. Some will stay as they are for all of cosmic time (maybe), others only last millionths of seconds before decaying.
Some, like uranium can be induced to decay. When you bombard the uranium ore enriched with u-235 this will cause the decay at the rates we find useful for power generation.
You could make nuclear power plants (or bombs) of many other elements and isotopes but they wont be as efficient or they may be completely useless (i.e. it takes more energy to cause the atom to decay than we get our of it).
Tl;dr – it’s the best mix of safe, economical, and viable element for what we need at this time.
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