Production radioactive isotopes

Lead occurs naturally as a mixture of four non-radioactive isotopes, and Pb, as well as the radioactive isotopes ° Pb and Pb. All but Pb arise by radioactive decay of uranium and thorium. Such decay products are known as radiogenic isotopes. 

Krypton and Xenon from Huclear Power Plants. Both xenon and krypton are products of the fission of uranium and plutonium. These gases are present in the spent fuel rods from nuclear power plants in the ratio 1 Kr 4 Xe. Recovered krypton contains ca 6% of the radioactive isotope Kr-85, with a 10.7 year half-life, but all radioactive xenon isotopes have short half-Hves. 

Properties. Strontium is a hard white metal having physical properties shown in Table 1. It has four stable isotopes, atomic weights 84, 86, 87, and 88 and one radioactive isotope, strontium-90 [10098-97-2] which is a product of nuclear fission. The most abundant isotope is strontium-88. 

In 1938 Niels Bohr had brought the astounding news from Europe that the radiochemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in Berlin had conclusively demonstrated that one of the products of the bom-bardmeiit of uranium by neutrons was barium, with atomic number 56, in the middle of the periodic table of elements. He also announced that in Stockholm Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Frisch had proposed a theory to explain what they called nuclear fission, the splitting of a uranium nucleus under neutron bombardment into two pieces, each with a mass roughly equal to half the mass of the uranium nucleus. The products of Fermi s neutron bombardment of uranium back in Rome had therefore not been transuranic elements, but radioactive isotopes of known elements from the middle of the periodic table. 

This technique is based upon the detection of corrosion products, in the form of dissolved metal ions, in the process stream. A thin layer of radioactive material is created on the process side of an item of plant. As corrosion occurs, radioactive isotopes of the elements in the construction material of the plant pass into the process stream and are detected. The rate of metal loss is quantified and local rates of corrosion are inferred. This monitoring technique is not yet in widespread use but it has been proven in several industries. 

Rn. a radioactive isotope of radon, is a decay product of naturally occurring uranium-238. Because it is gaseous and chemically... 

For the purposes of analytical chemistry, four kinds of monochromatic beams need to be considered. (The quotation marks are to remind the reader that the beams under discussion are not always truly monochromatic.) Three kinds of beams—those produced by Bragg reflection (4.9), filtered beams (4.6), beams in which characteristic lines predominate over a background that can be neglected— will be discussed later ( 6.2). The fourth kind of beam contains monochromatic x-rays that are a by-product of our atomic age and that promise to grow in importance they are given off by radioactive isotopes. These x-rays must not be confused with 7-rays (11.1), which also originate from radioactive atoms but which differ from x-rays because the transformation that leads to radiation involves the nucleus. 

More precise estimates come from accurate measurements of isotope ratios. Three pairs of radioactive isotopes and their products are abundant enough for such ratios to be measured ... 

Tracer materials are defined as any product included in the test substance that can be recovered analytically for determining the drift from the application. This may be the active ingredient in an actual tank mix, or it may be a material added to the tank mix for subsequent detection. The selection of an appropriate tracer for assessing deposition rates in the field is critical to the success of a field study. Tracer materials such as low-level active ingredient products, colored dyes, fluorescent dyes, metallic salts, rare earth elements and radioactive isotopes have been used with varying degrees of success in the field. An appropriate tracer should have the following characteristics ... 

When NO reacts with C1N02, the products are C1NO and N02. There are two ways in which this reaction could occur. Write equations showing the possible mechanisms. Explain how the use of a radioactive isotope could clarify the mechanism. 

The penetration depth of cosmic radiation is of the order of 1 m and therefore isotopes are produced by spallation only in the surface layers of meteorites and the moon. After collisions of meteorites with each other or with the moon, newly formed surfaces get exposed to cosmic radiation and production of stable and radioactive isotopes starts. If P is the production rate of a... 

Even nowadays the application of radioactive isotopes is the most sensitive method for the analysis of biomolecules or their reaction products. Besides the low detection limits, the replacement of a naturally overbalancing stable isotope by its radioactive analogue does not interfere with the physical or chemical properties of the enzyme (with some exceptions for hydrogens). Figure 6 lists some frequently used radioactive isotopes and their half-life periods. 

The most direct information on the state of cobalt has come from Mossbauer spectroscopy, applied in the emission mode. As explained in Chapter 5, such experiments are done with catalysts that contain the radioactive isotope 57Co as the source and a moving single-line absorber. Great advantages of this method are that the Co-Mo catalyst can be investigated under in situ conditions and the spectrum of cobalt can be correlated to the activity of the catalyst. One needs to be careful, however, because the Mossbauer spectrum one obtains is strictly speaking not that of cobalt, but that of its decay product, iron. The safest way to go is therefore to compare the spectra of the Co-Mo catalysts with those of model compounds for which the state of cobalt is known. This was the approach taken... 

As a result of slow (thermal) neutron irradiation, a sample composed of stable atoms of a variety of elements will produce several radioactive isotopes of these activated elements. For a nuclear reaction to be useful analytically in the delayed NAA mode the element of interest must be capable of undergoing a nuclear reaction of some sort, the product of which must be radioactively unstable. The daughter nucleus must have a half-life of the order of days or months (so that it can be conveniently measured), and it should emit a particle which has a characteristic energy and is free from interference from other particles which may be produced by other elements within the sample. The induced radioactivity is complex as it comprises a summation of all the active species present. Individual species are identified by computer-aided de-convolution of the data. Parry (1991 42-9) and Glascock (1998) summarize the relevant decay schemes, and Alfassi (1990 3) and Glascock (1991 Table 3) list y ray energy spectra and percentage abundances for a number of isotopes useful in NAA. 

High-energy radiation may be classified into photon and particulate radiation. Gamma radiation is utilized for fundamental studies and for low-dose rate irradiations with deep penetration. Radioactive isotopes, particularly cobalt-60, produced by neutron irradiation of naturally occurring cobalt-59 in a nuclear reactor, and caesium-137, which is a fission product of uranium-235, are the main sources of gamma radiation. X-radiation, of lower energy, is produced by electron bombardment of suitable metal targets with electron beams, or in a... 

The same problems of separating radioactive materials occur of course with the fission products of uranium where the task is often to separate a much larger number of different carrier-free radio-elements than occurs in normal targets. The mixture is complex and consists of elements from zinc to terbium and several hundred radioactive isotopes of varying half-life. 

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