Nuclear reactor physics
Modern deposits of uranium contain only up to ~0.7% U (and ~99.3% U), which is not enough to sustain a chain reaction moderated by ordinary water. But U has a much shorter half-life (700 million years) than U (4.5 billion years), so in the distant past the percentage of U was much higher. About two billion years ago, a water-saturated uranium deposit (in what is now the Oklo mine in Gabon, West Africa) underwent a naturally occurring chain reaction that was moderated by groundwater and, presumably, controlled by the negative void coefficient as the water boiled from the heat of the reaction. Uranium from the Oklo mine is about 50% depleted compared to other locations: it is only about 0.3% to 0.7% U; and the ore contains traces of stable daughters of long-decayed fission products.Fermi age theory
Isotopes of uranium
Around 99.284% of natural uranium is uranium-238, which has a half-life of 1.41×10 seconds (4.468×10 years, or 4.468 billion years). Depleted uranium has an even higher concentration of the U-238 isotope, and even low-enriched uranium (LEU), while having a higher proportion of the uranium-235 isotope (in comparison to depleted uranium), is still mostly U-238. Reprocessed uranium is also mainly U-238, with about as much uranium-235 as natural uranium, a comparable proportion of uranium-236, and much smaller amounts of other isotopes of uranium such as uranium-234, uranium-233, and uranium-232