Introduction
Radioactive disequilibria refer to the field of geochemistry concerned with the chronological or geochemical use of the intermediate nuclides of the three natural decay series of 238U, 235U and 232Th (whose final stable nuclides are 206Pb, 207Pb and 208Pb respectively). There is a radioactive disequilibrium between two or several nuclides as soon as the ratio of their activities is different from the equilibrium value (usually 1 in the case of secular equilibrium, which corresponds to the steady state reached by the whole decay series in a closed system). The applications are numerous, in a wide range of domains from mantle (magma generation and transfer) to surface processes (sedimentation, dating of recent deposits, and studies in the hydrosphere and atmosphere). They are powerful dating methods for Quaternary materials (with an upper limit of about 600 000 years) and offer the opportunity of studying the timescales of geologic processes from a few days to several 105...
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Condomines, M. (1998). Uranium series disequilibria . In: Geochemistry. Encyclopedia of Earth Science. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4496-8_333
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4496-8_333
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