system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
If none of the primordial nuclides (Uranium etc.) had a long half life's would we be able to make power plants or bombs?

Most of the natural radioactive elements involved in the discovery of radiation seem to have been either radioactive since the formation of the earth or a daughter product of something else that is. If the half life of the here-since-earth-was-formed elements was (say) 1000 years or less, is there enough carbon 14 or other "replenished continuously" elements to discover radioactivity? Would we be able to make power plants and bombs etc.?

To turn the question on its head, was all the energy we release in power plants and bombs initially stored during nuclear synthesis billions of years ago? If half life's were shorter, would it mean (say) making a 10kt uranium bomb would require "making" kilos of uranium using some energetically expensive process?
gpt
You pretty much got it.  The energy of some past supernova gets stored in uranium, and part of it gets released back as it is transformed into lead and other stable elements.

It's possible, at least in theory, to create an energy releasing nuclear process with *stable* isotopes...lead has more energy stored in it that iron, so you could get at that someone, you might get a bomb or a power source.  But there is no practical way of doing that with current technology.

Also, nuclear energy released by fusion would not be affected.