Technetium handling precautions

The scarceness of reports concerning organotechnetium was commented upon in COMC (1982) and GOMC (1995). Both chapters on this element cited the cost of technetium and precautions necessary for handling... 

For work with solutions, and in particular with solid materials, precautions against electrostatic charging and the effects of air currents have to be taken, and standard radiochemical techniques should be used. The handling techniques required for other technetium isotopes such as Tc are described below (Scheme 2). 

Technetium was the first of the artificially produced elements (1937) when it was obtained, as the isotopes 95Tc and Tc, by bombarding Mo with deuterons. Today twenty-one isotopes, all radioactive, are known with mass numbers 90-111. The longest lived isotope is Tc (ha 4 x 106 y), but the commonest is "Tc (tm — 2 x 105 y). It is isolated in fairly large quantities from spent nuclear fuel, where it constitutes ca. 6% of the fission products. The total amount of "Tc is about 78 tons, which exceeds the known amount of rhenium in the earth s crust. "Tc emits a soft (293.6 Kev) /3 particle and can be handled with only very modest precautions. 

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