Chemical Element: uranium
(Modern Latin: named for the planet Uranus; radioactive metal)
Chemical-Element Information
Symbol: UAtomic number: 92
Year discovered: 1789
Discovered by: Martin Heinrich Klaproth (1743-1817), a German chemist.
- A yellow glass containing more than one percent uranium oxide, dating back to 79 A.D., was found near Naples in Italy.
- During the first 150 years uranium was known, few uses could be found for it, and it was studied chiefly because it was the heaviest element then known.
- In 1938, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann discovered that the uranium nucleus undergoes fission when bombarded with neutrons, and thus offered the possibility of giving up its nuclear energy in a sustained chain reaction.
- Klaproth recognized an unknown element in pitchblende from Saxony and attempted to isolate the metal in 1789.
- To this new substance, Klaproth gave the name uranium in honor of Sir William Herschel’s discovery of the planet Uranus in 1781.
- Uranium metal itself was first isolated, in 1841, by Eugène Melchoir Peligot, who reduced the anhydrous chloride with potassium.
- The radioactive nature of uranium was not appreciated for another 55 years when, in 1896, Henri Becquerel detected its radioactivity.
- The first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was conducted by Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago on December 2, 1942.
- With the development of methods for controlling the rate of fission, the first wartime and peacetime applications of nuclear energy soon followed.
- The first atomic bomb test was detonated on July 16, 1945; and the first bomb used in warfare was dropped August 6, 1945.
- Atomic power for propulsion was used for the first time in a submarine (USS “Nautilus”) in 1956, and one of the first full-scale nuclear power electrical generators began production at Shippingport, Pennsylvania, on December 2, 1957.
- On March 28, 1979, America’s worst civilian nuclear power plant accident occurred.
- It was on this day that a cooling system failure caused a near-meltdown at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania.
- The accident so scared the American public that nuclear power went into an eclipse from which it has not recovered.
- It is said that nuclear power itself wasn’t the problem.
- The public lost confidence in the ability of power companies to manage their technology.
Name in other languages:
French: uranium
German: Uran
Italian: uranio
Spanish: uranio
Information about other elements may be seen at this Chemical Elements List.
A special unit about words that include chemo-, chem- may be seen here.