Dubna Laboratory

In 1967, Flerov and associates at the Dubna Laboratory reported their inability to detect an alpha emitter with a half-life of 8 s which was assigned by the Berkeley group to 257-103. This assignment has been changed to 258Lr or 259Lr. 

Early on, gas-phase chemical separations played an important role in the investigation of the chemical properties of transactinide elements. The technique was pioneered by I. Zvara and co-workers at the Dubna laboratory and involved first chemical studies of volatile Rf, Db and Sg halides and/or oxyhalides [73,74,75] see Chapter 7 for a detailed discussion. The experimental set-ups and the techniques involved are presented in Section 4.2. A new technique, named OFGA (On-line Gas chromatography Apparatus), which allowed the a-spectrometric measurement of final products, developed by H.W. Gaggeler and co-workers was then successful in studying volatile transactinide compounds from Rf up to Bh [76,77,78,79], see Chapter 7 for a detailed discussion. In all these... 

My sincere thanks go to my colleagues V. Z. Belov, Yu. T. Chuburkov, V. P. Domanov, B. Eichler, S. Hiibener, M. R. Shalaevskii, L. K. Tarasov, A. B. Yakushev, B. L. Zhuikov, T. S. Zvarova - my wife, and others. Together we pioneered and conducted transactinoid studies as well as tried to analyze the fundamental aspects of what we were doing - the gas phase radiochemistry of metallic elements. We were a small group of chemists embedded in a large physical laboratory. Hence, it was of decisive importance for us that the late Prof. G. N. Flerov put much emphasis on the role of chemical identification of new elements. He actually initiated, and then invariably supported, radiochemical studies in the Dubna laboratory. 

Back in 1957 the scientists of the Dubna Laboratory of nuclear reactions first attempted to synthesize element 104. 

Allred Nobel was immediately accepted by the lUPAC. However, experiments at Berkeley and the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow showed that the original Swedish claim to have prepared element 102 was in error. Attempts to synthesize and identify isotopes of element 102 in heavy ion bombardments of actinide targets dragged on for many years at the laboratories in Berkeley and EHibna, Russia. Thus, scientists from Berkeley suggested that the credit for the discovery should be shared. But, in 1993 the lUPAC-lUPAP Transfermium Working Group concluded that the Dubna laboratory finally achieved an undisputed synthesis. 

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