If you wish to use the Images in a manner not permitted by these terms and conditions please contact the Publishing Services Department by email. If you are in any doubt, please ask. Commercial use of the Images will be charged at a rate based on the particular use, prices on application.
In such cases we would ask you to sign a Visual Elements licence agreement, tailored to the specific use you propose. The RSC makes no representations whatsoever about the suitability of the information contained in the documents and related graphics published on this Site for any purpose.
All such documents and related graphics are provided "as is" without any representation or endorsement made and warranty of any kind, whether expressed or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, compatibility, security and accuracy. In no event shall the RSC be liable for any damages including, without limitation, indirect or consequential damages, or any damages whatsoever arising from use or loss of use, data or profits, whether in action of contract, negligence or other tortious action, arising out of or in connection with the use of the material available from this Site.
Nor shall the RSC be in any event liable for any damage to your computer equipment or software which may occur on account of your access to or use of the Site, or your downloading of materials, data, text, software, or images from the Site, whether caused by a virus, bug or otherwise.
Jump to main content. Periodic Table. Glossary Allotropes Some elements exist in several different structural forms, called allotropes. Discovery date Discovered by Glenn Seaborg and colleagues Origin of the name Plutonium, is named after the then planet Pluto, following from the two previous elements uranium and neptunium. Glossary Group A vertical column in the periodic table. Fact box. Glossary Image explanation Murray Robertson is the artist behind the images which make up Visual Elements.
Appearance The description of the element in its natural form. Biological role The role of the element in humans, animals and plants.
Natural abundance Where the element is most commonly found in nature, and how it is sourced commercially. Uses and properties. Image explanation. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Plutonium was used in several of the first atomic bombs, and is still used in nuclear weapons.
The complete detonation of a kilogram of plutonium produces an explosion equivalent to over 10, tonnes of chemical explosive. Plutonium is also a key material in the development of nuclear power. It has been used as a source of energy on space missions, such as the Mars Curiosity Rover and the New Horizons spacecraft on its way to Pluto. Biological role. Plutonium has no known biological role.
It is extremely toxic due to its radioactivity. Natural abundance. The greatest source of plutonium is the irradiation of uranium in nuclear reactors. This produces the isotope plutonium, which has a half-life of 24, years. Help text not available for this section currently. Elements and Periodic Table History. They produced it by bombarding uranium with deuterium nuclei alpha particles. This first produced neptunium with a half-life of two days, and this decayed by beta emission to form element 94 plutonium.
Within a couple of months element 94 had been conclusively identified and its basic chemistry shown to be like that of uranium. To begin with, the amounts of plutonium produced were invisible to the eye, but by August there was enough to see and weigh, albeit only 3 millionths of a gram. However, by the Americans had several kilograms, and enough plutonium to make three atomic bombs, one of which exploded over Nagasaki in August Atomic data.
Glossary Common oxidation states The oxidation state of an atom is a measure of the degree of oxidation of an atom. Oxidation states and isotopes. Glossary Data for this section been provided by the British Geological Survey. Relative supply risk An integrated supply risk index from 1 very low risk to 10 very high risk. Recycling rate The percentage of a commodity which is recycled. Substitutability The availability of suitable substitutes for a given commodity. Reserve distribution The percentage of the world reserves located in the country with the largest reserves.
Political stability of top producer A percentile rank for the political stability of the top producing country, derived from World Bank governance indicators. Political stability of top reserve holder A percentile rank for the political stability of the country with the largest reserves, derived from World Bank governance indicators. Young's modulus A measure of the stiffness of a substance. Shear modulus A measure of how difficult it is to deform a material. Bulk modulus A measure of how difficult it is to compress a substance.
Vapour pressure A measure of the propensity of a substance to evaporate. Pressure and temperature data — advanced. Listen to Plutonium Podcast Transcript :. You're listening to Chemistry in its element brought to you by Chemistry World , the magazine of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Hello, this week on Chemistry in its element a substance that most people think is man made but in fact often turns up in the centres of stars.
It also packs a huge nuclear punch when it's in the right sort of warhead and also has the power to be a super conductor. The only problem is its radio active and that means that when it decays it tends to fall apart. Plutonium's often billed as the 'most toxic substance known to man'. Just the word plutonium instils a dread in people's minds - And it's the early history of plutonium that established its dark side - and it's a reputation that's been hard to shake-off since.
Glenn Seaborg discovered plutonium at Berkeley in , and in the following spring, when it was found that it could sustain a nuclear chain reaction, he secretly wrote to President Roosevelt, to inform him of that this substance had the potential to be a powerful source of nuclear energy. And from that moment the race was on to produce significant amounts to supply a secret project codenamed the Manhattan Engineering District, the goal of which was to produce a nuclear bomb.
Anyone familiar with the iconic image of the mushroom cloud understands the tremendous explosive power of a correctly controlled detonation of plutonium. The energy density is mind-boggling: a sphere of metal 10 cm in diameter and weighing just 8 Kg is enough to produce an explosion at least as big as the one that devastated Nagasaki in But apart from military uses like this, plutonium also has one of the richest chemistries of any element.
There are six different forms of plutonium, known as allotropes, that all exist at different temperatures and behave differently. At room temperature, for instance, the plutonium is very brittle, but heated to around Celsius is transforms to a much more malleable metal. Scientists have found that they can mimic this effect by adding a small amount of gallium, which gives the room temperature metal similar properties to its higher-temperature counterpart, and this makes it much easier to work with.
Mixing plutonium with other metals can also produce substances with other interesting properties. For instance, adding some cobalt and gallium can produce a material that behaves as a super-conductor at low temperatures. Its electrons link up into a close-knit arrangement called Cooper pairs, which allow electricity to flow freely with no resistance. But unfortunately this arrangement doesn't last very long.
Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. JavaScript appears to be disabled on this computer. Please click here to see any active alerts. Plutonium chemical symbol Pu is a silvery-gray, radioactive metal that becomes yellowish when exposed to air.
Plutonium is considered a man-made element, although scientists have found trace amounts of naturally occurring plutonium produced under highly unusual geologic circumstances. The most common radioisotopes radioisotopes A form of an element that has the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons in the nucleus, giving it a different atomic mass.
For example, uranium has thirty-seven different isotopes, including uranium and uranium Alpha Particles. Half-life : Plutonium 6, years Plutonium 24, years Plutonium The metal quickly dissolves in concentrated mineral acids. A large piece of plutonium feels warm to the touch because of the energy given off by alpha decay; larger pieces can produce enough heat to boil water. At room temperature alpha-form plutonium the most common form is as hard and brittle as cast iron.
It can be alloyed with other metals to form the room-temperature stabilized delta form, which is soft and ductile. Unlike most metals, plutonium is not a good conductor of heat or electricity. It has a low melting point and an unusually high boiling point. Plutonium can form alloys and intermediate compounds with most other metals, and compounds with a variety of other elements. Some alloys have superconductive abilities and others are used to make nuclear fuel pellets.
Its compounds come in a variety of colors, depending on the oxidation state and how complex various ligands are. In aqueous solution there are five valance ionic states. Plutonium, along with all of the other transuranium elements, is a radiological hazard and must be handled with specialized equipment and precautions. Animal studies have found that a few milligrams of plutonium per kilogram of tissue are lethal. Plutonium generally isn't found in nature.
Trace elements of plutonium are found in naturally occurring uranium ores. Here, it is formed in a way similar to neptunium: by irradiation of natural uranium with neutrons followed by beta decay. Primarily, however, plutonium is a byproduct of the nuclear power industry. Each year, around 20 tons of plutonium is produced, according to the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Spent nuclear fuel can also be reprocessed to separate usable plutonium from other elements in the fuel.
Atmospheric weapons testing in the s and s left tons of plutonium in the Earth's atmosphere that is still there today, according to the World Nuclear Association. For the most part, plutonium isn't used for much. In fact, of the five common isotopes, only two of plutonium's isotopes, plutonium and plutonium, are used for anything at all.
Plutonium is used to make electricity for space probes using radioisotope thermoelectric generators. These generators are switched on when the probes can't get enough solar power because they have traveled too far away from the sun.
0コメント