Radium nuclear properties

Curie, Marie S. (1867-1934). Born in Warsaw, Poland, she and her husband Pierre made an intensive study of the radioactive properties of uranium. They isolated polonium in 1898 from pitchblende ore. By devising a tedious and painstaking separation method, they obtained a salt of radium in 1912, receiving the Nobel Prize in physics for this achievement in 1903 jointly with Becquerel. In 1911, Mme. Curie alone received the Nobel Prize in chemistry. Her work laid the foundation of the study of radioactive elements which culminated in control of nuclear fission. 

At the southern end of this family are the metals strontium, barium, and radium. The kingdom s patterns are beginning to be established, and since patterns are the foundation of prediction we are able to predict that these regions will be much more reactive than those to the north. Indeed, they are too aggressive to their environment to be of much use, and nature has found no use for them. Nature s child, humanity, though, has put them to use. Radium is highly radioactive (a nuclear, not a chemical, property), and is used to kill unwanted proliferating cells. A radioactive form of strontium, strontium-90, is a component of nuclear fallout, and if it accumulates in place of calcium in bone it can kill cells that are needed for life and induce leukemia. 

Radium was also utilized in self-luminous paints for watch, clock and instrument dials and for emission in automatic control systems. Safer radioisotopes for technical properties, such as cobalt-60 and cesium-137, can nowadays be tailored in nuclear reactors and have entirely replaced radium. This has released us from the need for radium, which is a great advantage, as radium is so difficult to handle from an environmental point of view. It forms gaseous radon, affecting its surroundings. And the problem remains for a long time, as the most usual radidum isotope, Ra, has a half-life of 1600 years. Nowadays the use of radium has ceased. The annual amount manufactured is only round 100 g. 

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