uranium dioxide

“If the item is glass, and fluoresces neon green under a black light, it contains uranium dioxide 100 percent of the time.”

Commercial reactors have used the same fuel for decades: small pellets of uranium dioxide stacked inside long cylindrical rods made of a zirconium alloy.

In others, zirconium and even the uranium dioxide are replaced with different materials.

Particles found within a few kilometers of the power plant also contained nanosize pieces of uranium dioxide, the nuclear fuel used in the plant.

Uranium dioxide is compressed into pellets about the size of a fingertip.