uranium in which the proportion of uranium-235 has been increased through the process of isotope separation
Enriched uranium is a type of uranium in which the percent composition of uranium-235 (written U) has been increased through the process of isotope separation. Naturally occurring uranium is composed primarily of three isotopes: uranium-238 (U, 99.2732–99.2752% natural abundance), uranium-235 (U, 0.7198–0.7210%), and uranium-234 (U, 0.0049–0.0059%). U is the only primordial nuclide present in nature in appreciable quantities that is fissile with thermal neutrons. Proportions of uranium-238 (blue) and uranium-235 (red) found naturally versus enriched grades
Enriched uranium is used in both civil nuclear power generation and military nuclear weapons. Low-enriched uranium (LEU), containing less than 20% U, is used as fuel in light-water reactors, which make up most nuclear power reactors worldwide. Highly enriched uranium (HEU), containing 20% or more U, has been used in nuclear weapons, naval propulsion reactors, some research reactors, and certain specialized reactor designs. There are about 2,000 tonnes of highly enriched uranium in the world.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).