Plutonium :: essays research papers

plutoniumPlutonium is a radioactive metallic element. Although it is occasionallyfound in nature, mostly all of our plutonium is produced by artificial means in a lab.The official chemical symbol for plutonium is Pu, coming from its first andthird letters. Its atomic number is ninety-four. Plutonium is able to maintainits straight state until very high temperatures, melting at six hundred and fortydegrees Celsius, and boiling at three thousand four hundred and lx degrees.The density of Plutonium, at twenty degrees centigrade, is 19.86 grams per cubiccentimeter.Plutonium was discovered, in the laboratory, by Glenn Theodore Seaborg,and his associate Edward M. McMillan. The dickens shared the Nobel prize in 1951for their discoveries of Plutonium, Americium (Am), Curium (Cm), atomic number 97 (Bk),and Californium (Cf). In addition, Seaborg later contributed to the discoveryof three more radioactive elements, Einsteinium (Es), Mendelevium (Md), andNobelium (No). Plutonium was Seab orgs first discovery. Its name came fromPluto, the orbiter after Neptune for which Neptunium was named. In 1940, at theUniversity of California at Berkeley, he bombarded a sample of Uranium withdeuterons, the nuclei in atoms of deuterium, transmuting it into plutonium.Shortly after, Seaborg was able to isolate plutonium 239, an isotope used inatomic bombs.Plutonium is a highly dangerous and poisonous element because it rapidlygives off radiation in the form of important particles. Alpha particles, which areidentical to the nucleus of a helium atom, consist of two protons and twoneutrons tightly bound together. Although the particles can only travel nighfive centimeters in the air, they can cause great damage when the enter the body,causing cancer and other serious health problems. Beyond the danger of theirradiation, Plutonium will spontaneously explode when a certain amount, calledcritical mass, is kept together. Soon after the discovery of Plutonium, it wasdiscovered that at le ast two oxidization states existed. It is now known to existin oxidation states of +3, +4, +5, and +6.Currently, there are fifteen known isotopes of Plutonium, with massnumbers ranging between 232 and 246. The most important isotope is plutonium 239,or Pu-239. When struck by a neutron, this isotope undergoes a process calledfission. In fission, When struck by a neutron, the nucleus of the plutonium atomis split into two nearly equal parts, and energy is released. Although theenergy released by one atom is not much, the splitting of the nucleus releasesmore neutrons, which strike more plutonium atoms. This process, called a chain-reaction, produces enormous amounts of energy. This energy is often used topower nuclear reactors, or to provide the energy for nuclear weapons.