Uranium-235

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A fissile isotope of uranium, used for energy generation and in atomic weapons, containing 143 neutrons. It has a half-life of 7.038×10⁸ years; it decays into thorium-231 and ultimately lead. uncountable

    "The Zaporizhzhia plant provided about a fifth of Ukraine’s electricity before Russia’s invasion, and has been forced to operate on backup generators a number of times. It has six Soviet-designed water-cooled and water-moderated reactors containing uranium-235."

Example

More examples

"The Zaporizhzhia plant provided about a fifth of Ukraine’s electricity before Russia’s invasion, and has been forced to operate on backup generators a number of times. It has six Soviet-designed water-cooled and water-moderated reactors containing uranium-235."

Etymology

From uranium + 235 (the atomic mass of the isotope).

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.