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Old 10-25-2015, 01:50 AM   #31 (permalink)
jamesqf
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Quote:
Originally Posted by redpoint5 View Post
Precisely, which speeds up the half-life of naturally occurring U235, which speeds up the amount of time that the radioactive substance is radioactive.
No, it doesn't. The normal decay chain has a half-life, which is a series of alpha & beta decays taking place over hundreds of millions of years. Fission is an entirely different process, which basically doesn't happen in nature. (At least these days: see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natura...ission_reactor for an example in the distant past.)

Fission doesn't have a half-life: it happens when you hit the U-235 nucleus with the right sort of neutrons. The fission products are far more radioactive than the U-235. That's just a fact.

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