False or true????

Wen I learn in school my physics teachers told us that after proximatly 60-100 years nuclear weapons,reactors will be useless because radioactive isotops are colapsing and turning in to plumbum!!It means that those A-bombs that were produced in 1950-1960 is out of date.The same is happening in the nature.
Can anyone tell please is that true??I cant find any trustable source!!

Sorry for my engllish!!

yes eventualy enough of the uranium or plutonium decays and the weapon no longer works. Thats why new warheads are manufactured and the old ones destroyed.

[edit on 10-7-2006 by kipman725]

And what is about nature???Are radioactive raw materials collapsing also???does it mean that all the milions that goverments are investing in that technologie is useles after 60 years???

Yep all the uranium in the earths crust is slowly turning into lead. The half life of the most common uranium isotope is about 4 billion years. This means that every 4 billion years half the uranium in the earths crust has turned into lead. As the earth is 4.2billion years old there used to be alot less lead in the crust and alot more uranium. Uranium is only formed in supernova so to obtain more it would have to arrive in a meteroite or be mined from space.

*edited to be the correct isotope *doh*

[edit on 10-7-2006 by kipman725]

yes, in nature Radioactive Isotopes decay naturally. The rate of decay. depends on the element. This decay is the elements "Half-Life" which by definition is the time it takes for half of the radioactive matter to decay. For Example, it takes Uranium 4 Billion years to decay into Lead.

Originally posted by Paladin327
yes, in nature Radioactive Isotopes decay naturally. The rate of decay. depends on the element. This decay is the elements "Half-Life" which by definition is the time it takes for half of the radioactive matter to decay. For Example, it takes Uranium 4 Billion years to decay into Lead.

just to clarify this there are three isotopes of uranium:
uranium-235 which has a hlaf life of 713,000,000 years
and
uranium-238 which has a half life of 4500,000,000 years
and
uranium-234 which has a half life of 244,000 years

the most common in the earths crust is uranium-238

Does anyone know what percentage of mass/volume a nuke weapon has to lose before it is deemed out of date? I mean, 713 million years is a long time to lose only half.

Originally posted by watch_the_rocks
Does anyone know what percentage of mass/volume a nuke weapon has to lose before it is deemed out of date? I mean, 713 million years is a long time to lose only half.

I belive that uranium used in A-bombs is more pure as in the nature and it is more unstable as is nature.But maybe i'm wrong

"And what is about nature???Are radioactive raw materials collapsing also???does it mean that all the milions that goverments are investing in that technologie is useles after 60 years???"

Of coarse not they reuse old nuclear materials and make them into bullets to spray over the middle east and abroad. DU weapons they'll get ya everytime ver efficient armor piercing rounds since DU is heavy and dense. However the down side is the radiation exposure. 60 countries use this stuff in their guns.