The Mathematic of finding the Decay Product Compoistion of Pitchblende/Uraninite [closed]








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Just as the title says. I’m curious as to how you would go about figuring out the amount of decay products in a given sample of Pitchblende/Uraninite. I would hazard a guess at using the half life formula over and over but something seems off about doing that.




Well, it is straightforward. You get the amount of radioactive compounds in your mineral. Then find out the decay chain reactions, it generally goes from Uranium to Lead. 


<http://metadata.berkeley.edu/nuclear-forensics/Decay%20Chains.html>


[![example for U-235](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ur6PC.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ur6PC.png)


Then you will find half-life constants for each reaction and start to calculate from U-235 to lead one by one. 


Well if you think that it is just chore, write a Fortran code and enter radioactive decay constants, reactions and make a user input chain part and everyone can calculate the decay products for a given mineral/time.


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