Uranium–uranium dating
U, with a half-life of about 4.5 billion years, decays to U through emission of an alpha particle to thorium-234 (Th), which is comparatively unstable with a half-life of just 24 days. Th then decays through beta particle emission to protactinium-234 (Pa)). This decays with a half-life of 6.7 hours, again through emission of a beta particle, to U. This isotope has a half-life of about 245,000 years. The next decay product, thorium-230 (Th), has a half-life of about 75,000 years and is used in the uranium-thorium technique. Although analytically simpler, in practice U/U requires knowledge of the ratio at the time the material under study was formed and is generally used only for samples older than the ca. 450,000 year upper limit of the Th/U technique. For those materials (principally marine carbonates) for which these conditions apply, it remains a superior technique.
Primordial nuclide
These 33 primordial nuclides represent radioisotopes of 28 distinct chemical elements (cadmium, neodymium, samarium, tellurium, and uranium each have two primordial radioisotopes). The radionuclides are listed in order of stability, with the longest half-life beginning the list. These radionuclides in many cases are so nearly stable that they compete for abundance with stable isotopes of their respective elements. 
For three chemical elements - indium, tellurium, and rhenium, a very long lived radioactive primordial nuclide is found in greater abundance than a stable nuclide.
The longest-lived radionuclide has a half-life of , which is 160 trillion times the age of the Universe. Only four of these 33 nuclides have half-lives shorter than, or equal to, the age of the universe. Most of the remaining 29 have half-lives much longer. The shortest-lived primordial isotope, U, has a half-life of 704 million years, about one sixth of the age of the Earth and Solar System.