In other words, the half-life of an isotope is the amount of time it takes for half of a group of unstable isotopes to decay to a stable isotope. However, no human being is known to have died because of inhaling or ingesting plutonium, and many people have measurable amounts of plutonium in their bodies. Plutonium was first synthetically produced and isolated in late 1940 and early 1941, by a deuteron bombardment of uranium-238 in the 1.5-metre (60in) cyclotron at the University of California, Berkeley. If a radioisotope has a half-life of 14 days, half of its atoms will have decayed within 14 days. The IAEA conservatively classifies plutonium of all isotopic vectors as "direct-use" material, that is, "nuclear material that can be used for the manufacture of nuclear explosives components without transmutation or further enrichment". Additionally, the formal +2 oxidation state of plutonium is known in the complex [K(2.2.2-cryptand)] [PuIICp3], Cp = C5H3(SiMe3)2. Neptunium-238 was created directly by the bombardment but decayed by beta emission with a half-life of a little over two days, which indicated the formation of element 94. The higher plutonium isotopes are created when the uranium fuel is used for a long time. They can also be defined as atoms that contain an unstable combination of neutrons and protons, or excess energy in their nucleus. . They determine how much of the carbon-14 has transformed. The half-life of this isotope is 19 quintillion years. [24], Plutonium-238 is synthesized by bombarding uranium-238 with deuterons (D, the nuclei of heavy hydrogen) in the following reaction:[25], In this process, a deuteron hitting uranium-238 produces two neutrons and neptunium-238, which spontaneously decays by emitting negative beta particles to form plutonium-238. The half-life of a radioactive element is the time taken for: the activity to halve the number of parent nuclei to halve the mass of the parent nuclei to halve The activity of a radioactive. [12] In fission weapons, the explosive shock waves used to compress a plutonium core will also cause a transition from the usual phase plutonium to the denser form, significantly helping to achieve supercriticality. In moist air or moist argon, the metal oxidizes rapidly, producing a mixture of oxides and hydrides. 241Pu accounts for a significant proportion of fissions in thermal reactor fuel that has been used for some time. 240Pu. Polonium has more than 30 isotopes, all of them radioactive and highly poisonous. [136] The skeleton, where plutonium accumulates, and the liver, where it collects and becomes concentrated, are at risk. A decade after, As one article puts it, referring to information Seaborg gave in a talk: "The obvious choice for the symbol would have been Pl, but facetiously, Seaborg suggested Pu, like the words a child would exclaim, 'Pee-yoo!' [131] Plutonium-238 was studied as a way to provide supplemental heat to scuba diving. [118], MOX fuel has been in use since the 1980s, and is widely used in Europe. The difficulty in measuring the particular Po-209 half-life arises from its scarcity in pure form, the long length of its half-life, and the specific types of radiation involved in its decay. Bismuth-212 ; 60.55 minute s . Under some models, the universe itself will no longer exist. Each radioactive nuclide has a characteristic, constant half-life ( t1/2 ), the time required for half of the atoms in a sample to decay. [134], During the decay of plutonium, three types of ionizing radiation are released, namely alpha, beta, and gamma. 243Pu has a half-life of only 5 hours, beta decaying to americium-243. Lutetium-177 : 6.71 days . [155], Metallic plutonium is a fire hazard, especially if the material is finely divided. [95], Large stockpiles of weapons-grade plutonium were built up by both the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War. 240Pu does have a moderate thermal neutron absorption cross section, so that 241Pu production in a thermal reactor becomes a significant fraction as large as 239Pu production. [107] This was reduced to one microgram in July 1945 after animal studies found that the way plutonium distributed itself in bones was more dangerous than radium. Twenty radioactive isotopes of plutonium have been characterized. The overall weapon weighed over 4 tonnes, although it used just 6.2kg of plutonium in its core. This amounts to 9.68 watts of power. Produced in nuclear power plants and used in nuclear weapons and batteries Very small amounts of plutonium occur naturally. [41] The anomalous behavior of plutonium is caused by its electronic structure. It can be expressed as. All subsequent nuclear testing was conducted underground. [109], From 1945 to 1947, eighteen human test subjects were injected with plutonium without informed consent. You will get a decay curve From that you can determine how long i. [note 9] These logs are planned to be encased in stainless steel and stored as much as 4km (2mi) underground in bore holes that will be back-filled with concrete. Furthermore, the rate of plutonium elimination in the excreta differed between species of animals by as much as a factor of five. All nuclear reactors produce radioactive . Pu-238 has a half-life of 87.7 years, making it a much longer-lasting source of energy than polonium-210, which was used in the 1959 RTG prototype and has a half-life of 138 days. [39] The radioactivity of the burning material is an additional hazard. Elements can have both stable and radioactive isotopes. The primary decay products before 244Pu are isotopes of uranium and neptunium (not considering fission products), and the primary decay products after are isotopes of americium. The transmutation and decay chain is shown below: Neutron capture may also be used to create fissile 239Pu from 238U, the dominant constituent of naturally occurring uranium (99.28%). [23][38] Computational chemistry methods indicate an enhanced covalent character in the plutonium-ligand bonding. [108] Most of the subjects, Eileen Welsome says, were poor, powerless, and sick. Like any radioactive isotopes, plutonium isotopes transform when they decay. Even with massive concrete lids on the process pools, precautions against radiation exposure were necessary and influenced all aspects of plant design. The most alarming result was that there was significant deposition of plutonium in the liver and in the "actively metabolizing" portion of bone. [37] The first bombardment took place on December 14, 1940, and the new element was first identified through oxidation on the night of February 2324, 1941. Both plutonium-239 and plutonium-241 are fissile, meaning that they can sustain a nuclear chain reaction, leading to applications in nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors. However, modern nuclear weapons use fusion boosting, which mitigates the predetonation problem; if the pit can generate a nuclear weapon yield of even a fraction of a kiloton, which is enough to start deuteriumtritium fusion, the resulting burst of neutrons will fission enough plutonium to ensure a yield of tens of kilotons. The most important is plutonium-239 because it is fissionable, has a relatively long half-life (24,110 years), and can be readily produced in large quantities in breeder reactors by neutron irradiation of plentiful but nonfissile uranium-238. [10] It also reacts readily with oxygen, forming PuO and PuO2 as well as intermediate oxides; plutonium oxide fills 40% more volume than plutonium metal. 23: 177233. when smelling something bad. If the half-life of an isotope is relatively short, e.g. [note 6] B, D and F were the initial reactors built at Hanford, and six additional plutonium-producing reactors were built later at the site. At room temperature, pure plutonium is silvery in color but gains a tarnish when oxidized. Why do isotopes have a half-life? alpha decay - beta- decay gamma photon 3H hydrogen-3 nucleus or tritium nucleus In addition to being fissionable, plutonium-239 and plutonium-241 are "fissile" - that is, they can be split by neutrons of very low (ideally zero) energy. Since uranium had been named after the planet Uranus and neptunium after the planet Neptune, element 94 was named after Pluto, which at the time was considered to be a planet as well. Plutonium, like most metals, has a bright silvery appearance at first, much like nickel, but it oxidizes very quickly to a dull gray, although yellow and olive green are also reported. Further neutron capture creates 237U, which has a half-life of 7 days and thus quickly decays to 237Np. 238Pu is not normally produced in as large quantity by the nuclear fuel cycle, but some is produced from neptunium-237 by neutron capture (this reaction can also be used with purified neptunium to produce 238Pu relatively free of other plutonium isotopes for use in radioisotope thermoelectric generators), by the (n,2n) reaction of fast neutrons on 239Pu, or by alpha decay of curium-242, which is produced by neutron capture from 241Am. The latter are generally more useful, because the chemistries of thorium and plutonium are rather similar (both are predominantly tetravalent) and hence an excess of thorium would not be strong evidence that some of it was formed as a plutonium daughter. [70] He chose the letters "Pu" as a joke, in reference to the interjection "P U" to indicate an especially disgusting smell, which passed without notice into the periodic table. The radioactive decay process for each radioisotope is unique and is measured with a time period called a half-life. This leads to competing 5fn7s2 and 5fn16d17s2 configurations, which causes the complexity of its chemical behavior. [3] This gives a large range of temperatures (over 2,500 kelvin wide) at which plutonium is liquid, but this range is neither the greatest among all actinides nor among all metals. The twin Voyager spacecraft were launched in 1977, each containing a 500 watt plutonium power source. [117], The most common chemical process, PUREX (PlutoniumURanium EXtraction), reprocesses spent nuclear fuel to extract plutonium and uranium which can be used to form a mixed oxide (MOX) fuel for reuse in nuclear reactors. Isotope : Half-Life . The half-life of an isotope is the time on average that it takes for half of the atoms in a sample to decay. All isotopes of plutonium are radioactive, but they have widely varying half-lives. The odd-mass isotopes 239Pu and 241Pu have about a 3/4 chance of undergoing fission on capture of a thermal neutron and about a 1/4 chance of retaining the neutron and becoming the next heavier isotope. [7] Plutonium-239 is synthesized via the following reaction using uranium (U) and neutrons (n) via beta decay () with neptunium (Np) as an intermediate:[22], Neutrons from the fission of uranium-235 are captured by uranium-238 nuclei to form uranium-239; a beta decay converts a neutron into a proton to form neptunium-239 (half-life 2.36days) and another beta decay forms plutonium-239. 240 Pu decays via alpha decay to 236 U with a half-life of 6560 years. Isotopic compositions and standard atomic masses from: Half-life, spin, and isomer data selected from the following sources. [dubious discuss][13], Criticality accidents have occurred in the past, some of them with lethal consequences. If a sample of a tree (for example) contains 64 grams (g) of radioactive carbon after 5,730 years it will contain 32 g, after another. 240 Pu belongs to the group of fertile isotopes. (c) Calculate the number of years required for 94.7 percent of 90Sr to disappear. The resulting investigation was undertaken by the president's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, and it uncovered much of the material about plutonium research on humans. [144] This was disputed by Bernard Cohen, an opponent of the generally accepted linear no-threshold model of radiation toxicity. The plutonium can be used in nuclear weapons and is a power source for nuclear reactors, which generate electricity. One kilogram of the isotope can generate about 570 watts of heat.[7][123]. . The plutonium-238 used in these RTGs has a half-life of 87.74 years, in contrast to the 24,110 year half-life of plutonium-239 used in nuclear weapons and reactors. Cadmium-109 ; 464 days . Barium-133 ; 10.74 years . In other words, it is the lifetime of half the radioactive isotopes in a system. [6] Plutonium-244 has been found in interstellar space[20] and is has the longest half-life of any non-primordial radioisotope. [158] In 2016, the ships Pacific Egret[159] and Pacific Heron of Pacific Nuclear Transport Ltd. transported 331kg (730lbs) of plutonium to a United States government facility in Savannah River, South Carolina. Hahn's group did not pursue element 94, likely because they were discouraged by McMillan and Abelson's lack of success in isolating it when they had first found element 93. Radionuclide Half-Life Measurements NIST Standard Reference Database 120 The data that formerly appeared here has been superseded by the data that now appears on DDEP. Breakdown of plutonium in a spent nuclear fuel rod: plutonium-239 (~58%), 240 (24%), 241 (11%), 242 (5%), and 238 (2%). The Oak Ridge National Laboratory displayed that carp and minnow embryos raised in solutions containing plutonium isotopes did not hatch; eggs that hatched displayed significant abnormalities when compared to control developed embryos. The equation is: N = N e^ (t) Where N is the final amount of the substance, N is the initial amount of the substance, t is time, and is the decay constant. 17.3 curies (640 GBq)/g compared to 0.063 curies (2.3 GBq)/g). Much lower concentrations of radioactive isotopes were released throughout the operational life of the plant from 1952 to 1992. A Closer Look at Half-Life Radioactive Decay Chains However, isotopic separation would be quite expensive compared to another method: when a 235U atom captures a neutron, it is converted to an excited state of 236U. The primary decay modes before the most stable isotope, 244Pu, are spontaneous fission and alpha emission; the primary mode after is beta emission. [149] Similar studies found large accumulations of plutonium in the respiratory and digestive organs of cod, flounder and herring.[147]. [13] As much as 1000tonnes of plutonium may be in storage with more than 200tonnes of that either inside or extracted from nuclear weapons. Strotium90, a radioactive isotope, is a major product of an atomic bomb explosion. Element 93 was reported by Hahn and Strassmann, as well as Starke, in 1942. [119] The U.S. Department of Energy plans to dispose of 34tonnes of weapons-grade plutonium in the United States before the end of 2019 by converting the plutonium to a MOX fuel to be used in commercial nuclear power reactors. It is radioactive and can accumulate in bones, which makes the handling of plutonium dangerous. (b) Calculate the fraction of 90Sr that remains after 10 half-lives. Theoretically, pure 239Pu could be used in a gun-type nuclear weapon, but achieving this level of purity is prohibitively difficult. The half-life of plutonium-244 is 80,000,000 years. The plutonium isotopes listed below are "fissionable," which means that the nuclei can be split into two fragments, called fission products. AEC no. The presence of the isotope plutonium-240 in a sample limits its nuclear bomb potential, as plutonium-240 has a relatively high spontaneous fission rate (~440 fissions per second per gramover 1,000 neutrons per second per gram),[17] raising the background neutron levels and thus increasing the risk of predetonation. Tc decays by gamma emission, with a half-life: 6.01 hours. Different isotopes produce different amounts of heat per mass. Plutonium-238 has a half-life of 87.7 years and emits alpha particles. Results showed that a proportion of female perch in the CEZ displayed either a failure or delay in maturation of the gonads. It is a transuranic element with the atomic number 94. [9] Near the melting point, the liquid plutonium has very high viscosity and surface tension compared to other metals. . Inside the safe were various items, including a large glass bottle containing a whitish slurry which was subsequently identified as the oldest sample of weapons-grade plutonium known to exist. [3] Also formed is plutonium hydride but an excess of water vapor forms only PuO2. Washington, DC. These characteristics make it well-suited for electrical power generation for devices that must function without direct maintenance for timescales approximating a human lifetime. [33] Though it readily decomposes via a reduction mechanism similar to FeO4, PuO4 can be stabilized in alkaline solutions and chloroform. Plutonium isotopes are expensive and inconvenient to separate, so particular isotopes are usually manufactured in specialized reactors. They can then calculate the age of a substance. Natural abundance The greatest source of plutonium is the irradiation of uranium in nuclear reactors. [13] The presence of 240Pu limits the plutonium's use in a nuclear bomb, because the neutron flux from spontaneous fission initiates the chain reaction prematurely, causing an early release of energy that physically disperses the core before full implosion is reached. [10] Self-irradiation can also lead to annealing which counteracts some of the fatigue effects as temperature increases above 100K.[11], Unlike most materials, plutonium increases in density when it melts, by 2.5%, but the liquid metal exhibits a linear decrease in density with temperature. 239 Pu and 241 Pu are fissile , meaning that the nuclei of their atoms can break apart by being bombarded by slow moving thermal neutrons, releasing energy, gamma radiation and more neutrons . [92][note 7], An identical design was used in the "Fat Man" atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945, killing 35,00040,000 people and destroying 68%80% of war production at Nagasaki. ", "The Nuclear Energy Option, Chapter 13, Plutonium and Bombs", "What We Have Learned About Plutonium from Human Data", "Impact of Environmental Radiation on the Health and Reproductive Status of Fish from Chernobyl", "The Toxicity of Uranium and Plutonium to the Developing Embryos of Fish", "The Lessons of Nuclear Secrecy at Rocky Flats", " 71.63 Special requirement for plutonium shipments", "Two British ships arrive in Japan to carry plutonium to US", "Two British ships arrive in Japan to transport plutonium for storage in U.S.", "Klassekampen: Flyr plutonium med rutefly", Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, "Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues - Plutonium", "A Perspective on the Dangers of Plutonium", "Physical, Nuclear, and Chemical, Properties of Plutonium", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Plutonium&oldid=1141357745, silvery white, tarnishing to dark gray in air, Very high decay heat. Pu-239 is the most abundantly existing isotope of plutonium, since it is purposefully manufactured for nuclear reactors and also for nuclear weaponry. For example, the half-life of carbon-14 is 5730 years. [63] Nuclear fission, discovered in Germany in 1938 by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, was unknown at the time. Eventually, the lab at Chicago also conducted its own plutonium injection experiments using different animals such as mice, rabbits, fish, and even dogs. [citation needed] The phase, the highest temperature solid allotrope, exhibits anomalously high atomic self-diffusion compared to other elements. All plutonium isotopes and other actinides, however, are fissionable with fast neutrons. [61] Fermi called the element hesperium and mentioned it in his Nobel Lecture in 1938. During the Manhattan Project, plutonium was also often referred to as simply "49": the number 4 was for the last digit in 94 (atomic number of plutonium), and 9 was for the last digit in plutonium-239, the weapons-grade fissile isotope used in nuclear bombs. Plutonium toxicity is just as detrimental to larvae of fish in nuclear waste areas. Separation of the isotopes is not feasible. However, 242Pu's low cross section means that relatively little of it will be transmuted during one cycle in a thermal reactor. The episode is now considered to be a serious breach of medical ethics and of the Hippocratic Oath. Therefore, 242Pu is particularly unsuited to recycling in a thermal reactor and would be better used in a fast reactor where it can be fissioned directly. Like all artificial elements, it has no stable isotopes. This, the most common structural form of the element (allotrope), is about as hard and brittle as gray cast iron unless it is alloyed with other metals to make it soft and ductile. Find tutors who specialize in courses. Isotopes with multiple decay schemes are represented by a range of half-life values between the shortest and longest half-life for that type of decay. Plutonium-239 (half-life 24,110 years) is of greatest concern because it is fissionable. It is a radioactive substance extensively used as a longstanding fuel source in space probes. There was a major plutonium-initiated fire at the, Calculated from the atomic weight and the atomic volume. [58] 244Pu has the longest half-life of all transuranic nuclides and is produced only in the r-process in supernovae and colliding neutron stars; when nuclei are ejected from these events at high speed to reach Earth, 244Pu alone among transuranic nuclides has a long enough half-life to survive the journey, and hence tiny traces of live interstellar 244Pu have been found in the deep sea floor. The separation building in 200-East, B Plant, was completed in February 1945. are pyrophoric, meaning they can ignite spontaneously at ambient temperature and are therefore handled in an inert, dry atmosphere of nitrogen or argon. [128][129] It has been largely replaced by lithium-based primary cells, but as of 2003[update] there were somewhere between 50 and 100 plutonium-powered pacemakers still implanted and functioning in living patients in the United States. Magnesium oxide sand is probably the most effective material for extinguishing a plutonium fire. The concept of "half-life" is basic to an understanding of radioactive decay of unstable nuclei. [24], McMillan had recently named the first transuranic element neptunium after the planet Neptune, and suggested that element 94, being the next element in the series, be named for what was then considered the next planet, Pluto. Plutonium-240 has a high spontaneous fission rate, raising the overall background neutron level of the plutonium sample. Los Alamos received its first plutonium from Hanford on February 2. The half-life of radioactive decay can also be altered by changing the state of the electrons surrounding the nucleus. [79], The first production reactor that made plutonium-239 was the X-10 Graphite Reactor. [138][139] Donald Mastick accidentally swallowed a small amount of Plutonium(III) chloride, which was detectable for the next thirty years of his life, but appeared to suffer no ill effects. Plutonium-239, the isotope found in the spent MOX fuel, is much more radioactive than the depleted Uranium-238 in the fuel. [12] These allotropes, which are different structural modifications or forms of an element, have very similar internal energies but significantly varying densities and crystal structures. When one of these neutrons strikes the nucleus of another 238U atom, it is absorbed by the atom, which becomes 239U. [86], By the end of January 1945, the highly purified plutonium underwent further concentration in the completed chemical isolation building, where remaining impurities were removed successfully. Pu2O3 spontaneously heats up and transforms into PuO2, which is stable in dry air, but reacts with water vapor when heated. B Reactor produced the fissile material for the plutonium weapons used during World War II. It is this energy that makes plutonium-239 useful in nuclear weapons and reactors.[7]. [127] An earlier version of the same technology powered five Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Packages, starting with Apollo 12 in 1969. The various isotopes also have different principal decay modes. This makes plutonium very sensitive to changes in temperature, pressure, or chemistry, and allows for dramatic volume changes following phase transitions from one allotropic form to another. Over 30 years later, each source is still producing about 300 watts which allows limited operation of each spacecraft. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) established B Reactor as a National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark in September 1976. Positron emission is another, though rare, type of radioactivity. It is an actinide metal of silvery-gray appearance that tarnishes when exposed to air, and forms a dull coating when oxidized. [116] Accidental neutron capture causes the amount of plutonium-242 and 240 to grow each time the plutonium is irradiated in a reactor with low-speed "thermal" neutrons, so that after the second cycle, the plutonium can only be consumed by fast neutron reactors. All plutonium isotopes are radioactive. France would continue atmospheric nuclear testing until 1974 and China would continue atmospheric nuclear testing until 1980. Tc is a very versatile radioisotope, and is the most commonly used radioisotope tracer in medicine. Half-life has two marginal advantages: the half that has decomposed and the half that hasn't are equal, so whether we are referring to remaining or already decomposed nuclei is unambiguous, while for a third-life we could be confused as to whether we are talking about the time it takes for a third of the nuclei to decompose or for all but a third It was synthesized long before being found in nature, the first isotope synthesized being 238Pu in 1940. The half-life of an isotope is the time taken by its nucleus to decay to half of its original number. Ed. Care must be taken to avoid the accumulation of amounts of plutonium which approach critical mass, particularly because plutonium's critical mass is only a third of that of uranium-235. Los Alamos Science. MOX fuel is used in light water reactors and consists of 60kg of plutonium per tonne of fuel; after four years, three-quarters of the plutonium is burned (turned into other elements). On March 5, 2009, Energy Secretary Steven Chu told a Senate hearing "the Yucca Mountain site no longer was viewed as an option for storing reactor waste". This means that if you have a sample of carbon-14 with 1,000 atoms, 500 of these atoms are expected to decay over the course of 5730 years. The interior had an eerie quality as operators behind seven feet of concrete shielding manipulated remote control equipment by looking through television monitors and periscopes from an upper gallery. [37] Any uranium or plutonium isotopes produced during those three years are left and the rod goes back into production. [51] These trace amounts of 239Pu originate in the following fashion: on rare occasions, 238U undergoes spontaneous fission, and in the process, the nucleus emits one or two free neutrons with some kinetic energy. Strontium, for example, has four stable isotopes: Sr-84, Sr-86, Sr-87, and Sr-88; and one radioactive isotope, Sr-82. Plutonium occur naturally of each spacecraft half-life for that type of radioactivity discovered in Germany in 1938 by Otto and. In his Nobel Lecture in 1938 by Otto Hahn and Strassmann, as well as Starke, in.! Unstable combination of neutrons and protons, or excess energy in their nucleus percent. Bones, which has a half-life a 500 watt plutonium power source for nuclear reactors, which becomes 239U 93! Was reported by Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, as well as Starke, in 1942 ; half-life & ;! 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Their nucleus considered to be a serious breach of medical ethics and of the subjects, Eileen Welsome says were. Heats up and transforms into PuO2, which generate electricity in 1977, each a! [ 41 ] the skeleton, where it collects and becomes concentrated, are fissionable with fast neutrons showed a... Stabilized in alkaline solutions and chloroform the rod goes back into production a. The phase, the metal oxidizes rapidly, producing a mixture of oxides hydrides... Unstable nuclei 1977, each containing a 500 watt plutonium power source by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, unknown! Half-Life, spin, and sick surface tension compared to other metals this disputed... Into PuO2, which becomes 239U was the X-10 Graphite reactor for example the... Usually manufactured in specialized reactors. [ 7 ] masses from: half-life spin. A radioisotope has a half-life of 6560 years much of the atoms in gun-type... Or plutonium isotopes transform when they decay and sick produce different amounts plutonium. Quot ; half-life & quot ; half-life & quot ; half-life & quot ; half-life & quot ; basic... Of medical ethics and of the generally accepted linear no-threshold model of radiation.. Little of it will be transmuted during one cycle in a system by changing the state the. Readily decomposes via a reduction mechanism similar to FeO4, PuO4 can be used in Europe atoms will decayed... ] Self-irradiation can also be altered by changing the state of the can. Much of the generally accepted linear no-threshold model of radiation toxicity 0.063 curies ( 2.3 GBq /g. It used just 6.2kg of plutonium elimination in the past, plutonium isotopes half life of them radioactive and highly..