Molybdenum half-life

It was the first new element to be produced artificially from another element experimentally in a laboratory. Today, all technetium is produced mostly in the nuclear reactors of electrical generation power plants. Molybdenum-98 is bombarded with neutrons, which then becomes molybdenum-99 when it captures a neutron. Since Mo-99 has a short half-life of about 66 hours, it decays into Tc-99 by beta decay. 

The three isotopes with the longest half-life times, Tc, Tc, and Tc, were produced in small quantities as early as 1955 by the bombardment of molybdenum with 22MeV protons. Although Tc is the isotope with the longest half-life time, it is not the major isotope available from nuclear... 

The Sr-82 used in these studies was produced by spallation of a molybdenum target with 800 MeV protons at the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility (LAMPF) and radiochemically separated by the Nuclear Chemistry Group at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (LASL) (22). The major radionuclidic contaminant in the Sr-82 is Sr-85 which is present in at least 1 1 ratio relative to Sr-82. The actual ratio depends upon the length of time after the production of radioactive strontium. Because of the 65 day half life of Sr-85 and the 25 day half life of Sr-82, the Sr-85 Sr-82 ratio increases with time. Other radionuclides found by the Hammersmith group in the processed Sr-82/85 shipment were Sr-89 ( 1%), Sr-90 ( 0.01%), Co-58 ( 1%) and Rb-84 ( 1%) from (17). 

One of the strangest transition metals in modern medicine is technetium, which does not exist on Earth naturally. Its half-life, or the time that it takes for half of a sample of the element to break down, is so short that all the technetium created when the Earth formed has already disappeared. But scientists have found a way to bring it back from the dead. When an isotope of the element molybdenum—another transition metal—breaks down, it turns into an isotope of technetium that lasts for about 6 hours. The technetium isotope latches on to certain kinds of heart muscle and can be seen in the muscle with special machines, similar to an X-ray. 

The half-life of 181W has been re-investigated and a value of 120.95 + 0.02 days determined, which differs significantly from the currently accepted value 272 The u.v. absorption spectra of molybdenum atoms isolated in rare-gas matrices at 14 K have been correlated with similar gas-phase spectral data and assigned in spherical symmetry. Diffusion of the metal atoms in an Ar matrix was also studied and some tentative evidence obtained for dimer formation.273 The standard heat of vapourization of molybdenum has been determined274 as 689.3 kJ (g atom)-1. 

In this reaction scheme, the formation of the pentacyano complex is a relatively fast reaction, with rate constants of about 116 and 2.9 Af" sec" for the molybdenum (20°C) and tungsten (25°C) complexes, respectively, whereas the formation of the octacyano complex from the pentacyano complex is a relative slow reaction, with a half-life of several minutes at a cyanide ion concentration of 1 Af for both the molybdenum and the tungsten complexes. The formation of the octacyano complex from the pentacyano complex is third order in the cyanide ion concentration 155,156). This suggests that the rate-determining step is the reaction of the heptacyano complex with cyanide ions. It seems, however, that the pentacyano complex is a necessary intermediate in the synthesis of the octacyano complex. This proposed reaction scheme makes it possible for the first time to explain why the octacyano complex of rhenium(V), which is also a d species, is still unknown in spite of several attempts (and claims of success) by different groups in the past (see Section IIA) to synthesize this complex The reactive complexes [Re0(H20)(CN)4]" and [ReO(OH)(CN)4] do not exist at a pH > 8, at which there are enough free cyanide ions since the values of [Re0(H20)(CN)4]" are only 1.4 and 4.2. The formation ofthe intermediate [ReOtCNlg] (see Scheme 6) is thus not possible. Thus one cannot proceed beyond the tetracyano complex in this way. 

Instead, medical workers use a different isotope, molybdenum-99. When molybdenum-99 breaks down, it forms technetium-99m. But molybdenum-99 has a longer half life, almost three days. 

A common example is technetium-99m. It has a half-life of only six hours. It is prepared in a small generator, often housed in a hospital s radiology laboratory (Figure 10.7). The generator contains radioactive molybdate ion (MoO/ ). Molybdenum-99 is more stable than technetium-99m it has a half-life of 67 hours. 

Technetium is an artificial element obtained by the radioactive decay of molybdenum. Element 43, named technetium in 1947, had been discovered in 1937 by Carlo Perrier and Emilio Segre in a sample obtained from the Berkely Radiation Laboratory (now Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) in California (Perrier and Segre 1937, 1947). By bombarding a molybdenum strip with 8-MeV deuterons in a 37-in. cyclotron, a radioactive molybdenum species (half-life, 65 h) had been obtained which decayed by yff-emission to a short-lived isotope (half-life, 6 h) with novel properties, identified as technetium-99m (Segre and Seaborg 1938). 

Among the long-lived technetium isotopes only the p -emitter Tc with a half-life of 2.13-10 a is obtained in vveighablc amounts, either by neutron irradiation of highly purified natural molybdenum or by induced fission of with thermal neutrons. Because of the high fission yield of 6.13 atom%, appreciable quantities of Te ean be isolated from uranium fission product mixtures. Nuelear reactors with a power of 3500 MWth produce about 100 g of Tc per day or 6 TBq ( 10 kg) c/GWn, per year. 

The half-life of molybdenum-99 is 66.0 h. How much of a 1.000-mg sample of 4IM0 is left after 330 h ... 

Technetium-99 can be used for diagnostic tests of the heart and lungs. Because of technetium-99s very short half-life, medical facilities produce it from molybdenum-99. If the facility has a 25-g sample of molybdenum-99, how much will it have one week (168 h) later ... 

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