Uranium; Resources, Production and Demand: A Joint Report by the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency and the International Atomic Energy Agency

Paris, France: Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, 1977. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Wraps. Good. 136, [4] pages. Footnotes. Maps. Tables. Figures. Item has an undulation. Small spine tear. One page Corrigendum laid in. Pencil erasure residue on title page. Published every other year, Uranium Resources, Production, and Demand, or the "Red Book" as it is commonly known, is jointly prepared by the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency and the International Atomic Energy Agency. It is the recognized world reference on uranium and is based on official information received from 43 countries. It presents the results of a thorough review of world uranium supplies and demand and provides a statistical profile of the world uranium industry in the areas of exploration, resource estimates, production and reactor-related requirements. It provides substantial new information from all major uranium production centers. Long-term projections of nuclear generating capacity and reactor-related uranium requirements are provided as well as a discussion of long-term uranium supply and demand issues. Uranium is a chemical element with symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium is weakly radioactive because all isotopes of uranium are unstable, with half-lives varying between 159,200 years and 4.5 billion years. The most common isotopes in natural uranium are uranium-238 (which has 146 neutrons and accounts for over 99%) and uranium-235 (which has 143 neutrons). Uranium has the highest atomic weight of the primordially occurring elements. Its density is about 70% higher than that of lead, and slightly lower than that of gold or tungsten. It occurs naturally in low concentrations of a few parts per million in soil, rock and water, and is commercially extracted from uranium-bearing minerals such as uraninite.