Talk:Uraninite Crystal/@comment-1917647-20171226231616/@comment-1191892-20191120130828

It's not unstable at all, the uranium in triuranium octoxide is mostly U-238 with a half-life of 4 billion years. This also means it isn't particularly radioactive (the longer the half-life, the less radioactive it is, by definition). You can handle yellowcake safely with just a pair of decently thick rubber gloves.

Think of it in terms of a leaky bucket: the half-life is how long it takes for the bucket to get half-empty, the radioactivity is the water that leaks out. You can't have a bucket that's leaking loads of water but still takes 4 billion years to be half empty, now can you?