Nuclear fallout

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BusterJangle-Charlie — The mushroom cloud from Buster-Jangle Charlie, yield 14 kilotons (at 143 m • kt −1⁄3), during the initial phase of stem formation. The toroidal fireball is visible at the top, a condensation cloud is forming in the middle due to intense updrafts of moist air, and the forming partial stem can be seen below. The cloud exhibits the reddish-brown hue of nitrogen oxides.

Overview[]

Nuclear fallout, atomic fallout, arial fallout; or simply 'fallout', is the residual radioactive material propelled into the upper atmosphere following a nuclear blast or a nuclear reaction conducted in an unshielded facility, so called because it "falls out" of the sky after the explosion and the shock wave have passed. It commonly refers to the radioactive dust and ash created when a nuclear weapon explodes, but such dust can also originate from a damaged nuclear plant. Fallout may take the form of black rain and\or pink snow (rain and snow darkened by particulates).

The energy equation[]

Blast and the resulting air shockwave—40–50% of total energy.
Thermal (heat) radiation —30–50% of total energy.
Ionizing (Gamma rays, X-rays, and the higher level ultraviolet) radiation—5% of total energy (more in a neutron bomb).
Residual (Alpha and Beta radiation) radiation—5–10% of total energy with the mass of the explosion.
~1% in total for Light, EMP, microwaves and radio waves combined.

Physical characteristics and toxicity of the fallout[]

What_Countries_Have_Nuclear_Weapons? — What Countries Have Nuclear Weapons?

With international political tensions on the rise, the threat of an all-out nuclear war seems too close for comfort. What countries possess nuclear weapons? Is the likelihood of a nuclear war higher than we think?

What 'fallout' is[]

Nuclear fallout, atomic fallout, arial fallout; or simply 'fallout', is the residual radioactive material propelled into the upper atmosphere following a nuclear blast or a nuclear reaction conducted in an unshielded facility, so called because it "falls out" of the sky after the explosion and the shock wave have passed. It commonly refers to the radioactive dust and ash created when a nuclear weapon explodes, but such dust can also originate from a damaged nuclear plant. Fallout may take the form of black rain and\or pink snow (rain and snow darkened by particulates).

This radioactive dust, consisting of material either directly vaporized by a nuclear blast or charged by exposure, is a highly dangerous kind of radioactive contamination.

An air burst (that is, a nuclear detonation far above the surface) can produce low level, but regional/worldwide fallout. A ground burst (that is, a nuclear detonation on the surface of the targeted land) can produce noticeably much more severe, but local fallout.

Parts of the sea bottom may become fallout. After the Castle Bravo test, white dust—contaminated calcium oxide particles originating from pulverized and calcined corals—fell for several hours, causing beta burns and radiation exposure to the inhabitants of the nearby atolls and the crew of the Daigo Fukuryū Maru fishing boat. The scientists called the fallout "Bikini snow".

What fallout looks like[]

Fallout may take the form of black rain and\or pink snow (rain and snow darkened by particulates, soot, oxides, dirt and so on).

Touching, eating and breathing in fall out[]

It is radioactive and and in some cases chemically poisons, so touching it may cause ill health; and either eating and\or breathing it in is usualy suicidal.

When fallout gets into the food chain[]

Caesium-137 will sink deep in to the ground and concentrating in the roots of trees, thus contaminating them and therefor their nuts!

How wind effects fall out[]

Weather can effect the fall out factor, especially local fall out. Wind would blow it in the direction the wind was going in. Snow and rain, especially if they come from considerable heights, would accelerate local fallout. The Atmospheric winds are able to bring fallout over large areas. For example, as a result of a Castle Bravo surface burst of a 15 Mt thermonuclear device at Bikini Atoll on March 1, 1954, a roughly cigar-shaped area of the Pacific extending over 500 km downwind and varying in width to a maximum of 100 km was severely contaminated. It logically follows on that any remaining gaseous or light wight fallout would be thinly dispersed evenly across the globe by the atmospheric winds in time.

The "Ils ne sont pas touché le Pérou, mais les collines sont devenus toxiques." factor[]

I was a term coined by a French sciantiist in the wake of the film Dr Stangelove to point out how it would drift around the world. In this case it went fron a nuke USA and southern Canada on to the Andies Moutains (especaly in Peru) after a period of just over a month.

Radio-chemistry of the fall out.[]

Strontium-90[]

Strontium (38 Sr) — Strontium (Strontium-32 shown here) is very similar to calcium, but it is more heavy and reactive. For this metal and its compounds, only very few and special applications exist. Strontium salts are used to make red fireworks. Strontium is notorious for the radioactive 90Sr, which is produced in nuclear power plants as well as in atomic explosions like that in Chernobyl and from atomic bombs. This has a half-life of 29 years. It is build into bones like calcium and there causes cancer.

Strontium is a chemical element with symbol Sr and atomic number 38. An alkaline earth metal, strontium is a soft silver-white or yellowish metallic element that is highly reactive chemically. The metal turns yellow when it is exposed to air. Strontium was recognized as a new element in 1790 when Adair Crawford analyzed a mineral sample from a lead mine near Strontian, Scotland. The 90Sr isotope is present in radioactive fallout and has a half-life of 28.90 years. It is a classic element of atomic fall out clouds and ground zero contamination.

Symbol: Sr
Electron configuration: [Kr] 5s2
Melting point: 768.8 °C
Atomic number: 38
Atomic mass: 87.62 u ± 0.01 u
Discovered: 1790
Discoverer: William Cruickshank
Abundance earth’s crust: 370 parts per million by weight, 87 parts per million by moles
Abundance solar system: 50 parts per billion by weight, 0.7 parts per billion by moles
Cost, pure: $100 per 100g
Cost, bulk: $? per 100g

CRT computer monitor front panel made from strontium and barium oxide-containing glass. This application used to consume most of the world's production of strontium. Strontium salts are added to fireworks in order to create red colors. Strontium carbonate and other strontium salts can be added to fireworks to give a deep red colour. This is the same effect that is used to identify strontium cations using the flame test. This application consumes about 5% of the world's production. Strontium-90 (90Sr) is also used in cancer therapy. Its beta emission and long half-life is ideal for superficial radiotherapy.

Scientists are testing strontium ranelate to see if it can be taken by mouth to treat thinning bones (osteoporosis). Radioactive strontium-89 is given intravenously (by IV) for prostate cancer and advanced bone cancer. Strontium chloride hexahydrate is added to toothpaste to reduce sensitive teeth. Strontium chloride is sometimes used in toothpastes for sensitive teeth. One popular brand includes 10% total strontium chloride hexahydrate by weight.

90Sr isotope is present in radioactive fallout and has a half-life of 28.90 years.

Strontium 91 has a half life 9.63 hours.

Strontium 92 has a half life 2.66 hours.

Strontium ltd strontiumltd.com/ is a company who's goal is to be "specialists in identifying and developing high growth potential small to medium sized companies. We focus and support these organisations to grow." It dose not use the metal or get involved in it despite of the company's name.

Polonium-210[]

Polonium is a chemical element with symbol Po and atomic number 84, discovered in 1898 by Marie Curie and Pierre Curie. They include heaters in space probes, antistatic devices, and sources of neutrons and alpha particles.

Symbol: Po
Electron configuration: [Xe] 6s24f145d106p4
Atomic number: 84
Discovered: 1898
Atomic mass: 209 u
Melting point: 253.8 °C
Discoverers: Pierre Curie, Marie Curie
Abundance earth’s crust: Of the order of 1 part per quadrillion.
Abundance solar system: negligible
2015 cost, pure: ? per 100g
2015 cost, bulk: ? per 100g

Polonium-210 is a rare radioactive metal discovered by Marie Curie in the late 19th century. It has a half-life of 138 days (about 4.5 months), decaying down to lead. During its radioactive decay, polonium-210 emits alpha particles.

Polonium is a chemical element with symbol Po and atomic number 84, discovered in 1898 by Marie Curie and Pierre Curie. A rare and highly radioactive element with no stable isotopes, polonium is chemically similar to bismuth and tellurium, and it occurs in uranium ores.

The heavy metal is also, like nearly all heavy metals, very toxic and was used in the poisoning of the Russia defector, Alexander Litvinenko.

Plutonium-239[]

Plutonium ring — A weapons-grade ring of electrorefined plutonium, typical of the rings refined at Los Alamos and sent to Rocky Flats for fabrication. The ring has a purity of 99.96%, weighs 5.3 kg, and is approx 11 cm in diameter. It is enough plutonium for one bomb core. The ring shape helps with criticality safety (less concentrated material).

Plutonium is a transuranic radioactive chemical element with symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is an actinide metal of silvery-gray appearance that tarnishes when exposed to air, and forms a dull coating when oxidized.

Symbol: Pu
Atomic number: 94
Electron configuration: [Rn] 5f67s2
Atomic mass: 244 u
Discovered: 1940
Melting point: 639.4 °C
Discoverers: Joseph W. Kennedy, Glenn T. Seaborg, Edwin McMillan, Arthur Wahl
Abundance earth’s crust: negligible
Abundance solar system: unknown
2015 Cost, pure: $4000 per gram
2015 Cost, bulk: per 100g

Early pacemaker batteries also used tiny amounts of plutonium-238.

Plutonium-239 emits Alpha radiation and has a half life of 24,000 years. That is for the time from now to the middle of the Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic, Late Stone Age) era. As a heavy metal, plutonium is also toxic.

Caesium-137[]

Caesium or cesium is a chemical element with symbol Cs and atomic number 55. It is a soft, silvery-gold alkali metal with a melting point of 28 °C, which makes it one of only five elemental metals that are liquid at or near room temperature. Handling it makes it runny and it reacts heavly in water with large amounts of it explodeing in water.

Symbol: Cs
Melting point: 28.44 °C
Boiling point: 670.8 °C
Electron configuration: [Xe] 6s1
Atomic number: 55
Discovered: 1860
Descovered by: Robert Bunsen and physicist Gustav Kirchhoff
Atomic mass: 132.90545 u ± 2 × 10^-7 u
Abundance earth’s crust: 3 parts per million by weight, 0.5 parts per million by moles
Abundance solar system: 8 parts per billion by weight, 70 parts per trillion by moles
2015 cost, pure: $1100 per 100g
Cost, bulk: $ per 100g

Since the 1990s, the largest application of the element has been as caesium formate for drilling fluids. It has a range of applications in the production of electricity, in electronics, and in chemistry. The radioactive isotope caesium-137 has a half-life of about 30 years and is used in medical applications, industrial gauges, and hydrology. Although the element is only mildly toxic, it is a hazardous material as a very reactive metal and its radioisotopes present a high health risk if released into the environment.

In 1967, based on Einstein defining the speed of light as the most constant dimension in the universe, the International System of Units isolated two specific wave counts from an emission spectrum of caesium-133 to co-define the second and the meter. Since then, caesium has been widely used in highly accurate atomic clocks. Caesium compounds are also used as part of drilling fluids.

Cesium readily combines with oxygen and is used as a getter, a material that combines with and removes trace gases from vacuum tubes and photoelectric cells. This was a small-scale applications of the metal, since not much was ever used in any 1 valve. Cesium is also used in atomic clocks, in modern photoelectric cells and as a catalyst in the hydrogenation of certain organic compounds.

Cesium - WebGL Virtual Globe and Map Engine was named after the metal, not made from it. Their mission is "to create the leading web-based globe and map for visualizing dynamic data".Cesium Developer Networkcesiumjs.org. Cesium is an open source geospatial visualization JavaScript library https://cesium.agi.com/.

Cobalt-60[]

Cobalt-cathode — English: Cobalt, fraction of a cathode, 2 x 2 cm.

Cobalt is a chemical element with symbol Co and atomic number 27. Like nickel, cobalt in the Earth's crust is found only in chemically combined form, save for small deposits found in alloys of natural meteoric iron.

Symbol: Co
Electron configuration: [Ar] 3d74s2
Atomic mass: 58.933195 u ± 0.000005 u
Melting point: 1,495 °C
Atomic number: 27
Discovered: 1735
Discoverer: Georg Brandt
Abundance earth’s crust: 25 parts per million by weight, 8 parts per million by moles
Abundance solar system: 4 parts per million by weight, 0.7 parts per million by moles
2015 cost, pure: $21 per 100g
2015 cost, bulk: $4.40 per 100g

Cobalt is primarily used as the metal, in the preparation of magnetic, wear-resistant and high-strength alloys. It is also used in phone and electric car batteries. Its compounds cobalt silicate and cobalt(II) aluminate (CoAl2O4, cobalt blue) give a distinctive deep blue color to glass, ceramics, inks, paints and varnishes. Cobalt occurs naturally as only one stable isotope, cobalt-59. Cobalt-60 is a commercially important radioisotope, used as a radioactive tracer and for the production of high energy gamma rays. Cobalt-60, 60Co, is a synthetic radioactive isotope of cobalt with a half-life of 5.2714 years.

Cobalt is the active center of coenzymes called cobalamins, the most common example of which is vitamin B12. As such it is an essential trace dietary mineral for all animals. Cobalt in inorganic form is also an active nutrient for bacteria, algae and fungi. It is toxic in very small amounts. names

Strangely, cobalt has been used for several corporate names-
Cobalt Light Systems https://www.cobaltlight.com/
- Developing innovative products & technologies for non-invasive, through barrier chemical analysis in security, pharmaceutical & research applications.
Insight100 & Insight100M - LEDs bottle scanners https://www.cobaltlight.com/products/insight100series/
- The original bottle scanners from Cobalt, Insight100™ and Insight100M™ systems are widely deployed at EU airports, including 8 of the top 10 hubs.
Cobalt Telephone Technologies for transactional and business use. www.ctt.co.uk/
- Cobalt Telephone Technologies builds innovative bespoke self-service environments for payments and transactions via smartphone, mobile and fixed phones.
Cobalt health http://www.cobalthealth.co.uk/
- Information on medical services provided the by Cobalt Appeal Fund charity, including MRI, PET-CT and Breast scanning and Cancer Prevention services.
Playcobalt http://playcobalt.com/
- Agame by Oxeye Game Studio in collaboration with Mojang and music by Anosou.

Uranium-235[]

HEUraniumC — A billet of highly enriched uranium that was recovered from scrap processed at the Y-12 National Security Complex Plant.

Uranium is a chemical element with symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-white metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons.

Symbol: U
Atomic number: 92
Atomic mass: 238.02891 u ± 0.00003 u
Discovered: 1789
Electron configuration: [Rn] 5f36d17s2
Melting point: 1,132 °C
Discoverer: Martin Heinrich Klaproth
Abundance earth’s crust: 2.7 parts per million by weight, 0.25 parts per million by moles
Abundance solar system: 1 part per billion by weight, 4 parts per trillion by moles
2015 cost, pure: $? per 100g
2015 cost, bulk: $9 per 100g

Uranium is a very heavy metal which can be used as an abundant source of concentrated energy. The isotope U-235 is important because under certain conditions it can readily be split, yielding a lot of energy.

Commercial nuclear power plants use fuel that is typically enriched to around 3% uranium-235. Uranium metal is used for X-ray targets in the making of high-energy X-rays. Before (and, occasionally, after) the discovery of radioactivity, uranium was primarily used in small amounts for yellow glass and pottery glazes, such as uranium glass and in Fiestaware. U-238 can be converted into fissionable plutonium in breeder reactors. Depleted uranium (238U) is used in kinetic energy penetrators and armor plating.

Uranium-235 (235U) is an isotope of uranium making up about 0.72% of natural uranium. Unlike the predominant isotope uranium-238, it is fissile, i.e., it can sustain a fission chain reaction. It is the only fissile isotope that is a primordial nuclide or found in significant quantity in nature.

It has a half-life of 703.8 million years (roughly 3 times bigger than the time from the first Dinosaurs to today). It was discovered in 1935 by Arthur Jeffrey Dempster. Its (fission) nuclear cross section for slow thermal neutrons is about 584.994 barns. For fast neutrons it is on the order of 1 barn Most but not all neutron absorptions result in fission; a minority result in neutron capture forming uranium-236.

Uranium-238 is the most prevalent isotope in uranium ore, has a half-life of about 4.5 billion years; that is, half the atoms in any sample will decay in that amount of time.

Uranium-233 is a fissile isotope of uranium that is bred from thorium-232 as part of the thorium fuel cycle. It decays to ‎229Th and has a half life of ‎160,000 years.

Thorium-232[]

Thorium is a chemical element with symbol Th and atomic number 90. A radioactive actinide metal, thorium is one of only two significantly radioactive elements that still occur naturally in large quantities as a primordial element.

Symbol: Th
Atomic number: 90
Electron configuration: [Rn] 6d27s2
Atomic mass: 232.03806 u ± 0.00002 u
Discovered: 1828
Descoverd by: Jöns Jakob Berzelius
Melting point: 1,755 °C
Boiling point: 4,787 °C
Abundance earth’s crust: 6 parts per million by weight, 0.5 parts per million by moles
Abundance solar system: 0.3 parts per billion by weight, 2 parts per trillion by moles
Cost, pure: ?$ per 100g
Cost, bulk: ?$ per 100g

Thorium-232, half life 14 Billion years, which is about ~3 times longer than the planet Earth has existed for and about twice the time the Universe has existed for.

Thorium was once commonly used as the light source in gas mantles and as an alloying material, but these applications have declined due to concerns about its radioactivity. Thorium is still widely used as an alloying element in TIG welding electrodes (at a rate of 1%-2% mix with tungsten). It remains popular as a material in high-end optics and scientific instrumentation; thorium and uranium are the only significantly radioactive elements with major commercial applications that do not rely on their radioactivity. Thorium is predicted to be able to replace uranium as nuclear fuel in nuclear reactors, but only a few proto-type thorium reactors have yet been completed.

Thorium is a toxic heavy metal.

Tritium (symbol T or 3H, also known as hydrogen-3)[]

Gaseous tritium light source — Radioluminescent 1.8 curies (67 GBq) 6 by 0.2 inches (152.4 mm × 5.1 mm) tritium vials are thin, tritium-gas-filled glass vials whose inner surfaces are coated with a phosphor. The vial shown here is brand-new.

Tritium (/ˈtrɪtiəm/ or /ˈtrɪʃiəm/; symbol T or 3H, also known as hydrogen-3) is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. The nucleus of tritium (sometimes called a triton) contains one proton and two neutrons, whereas the nucleus of protium (by far the most abundant hydrogen isotope) contains one proton and no neutrons. Naturally occurring tritium is extremely rare on Earth, where trace amounts are formed by the interaction of the atmosphere with cosmic rays. The name of this isotope is formed from the Greek word τρίτος (trítos) meaning "third". The normal Hydrogen isotope is a chemical element with chemical symbol H and atomic number 1. With an atomic weight of 1.00794 u, hydrogen is the lightest element on the periodic table.

Naturally occurring tritium is extremely rare on Earth, where trace amounts are formed by the interaction of the atmosphere with cosmic rays. The name of this isotope is formed from the Greek word τρίτος (trítos) meaning "third".

Tritium illumination is the use of gaseous tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, to create visible light. Tritium emits electrons through beta decay, and, when they interact with a phosphor material, fluorescent light is created, a process called radioluminescence. As based tritium illumination requires no electrical energy, it found wide use in applications such as emergency exit signs and illumination of wristwatches. More recently, many applications using radioactive materials have been replaced with photoluminescent materials.

The low energy of tritium's radiation makes it difficult to detect tritium-labeled compounds except by using liquid scintillation counting.

Tritium data

Symbol triton,3H
Neutrons 2
Protons 1
Natural abundance trace
Half-life 12.32 years
Decay products 3He
Isotope mass 3.0160492 u
Spin 1⁄2
Excess energy 14,949.794± 0.001 keV
Binding energy 8,481.821± 0.004 keV
Decay mode Decay energy
Beta emission 0.018590 MeV

Hydrogen is a chemical element with chemical symbol H and atomic number 1. With an atomic weight of 1.00794 u, hydrogen is the lightest element on the periodic table. Its monatomic form (H) is the most abundant chemical substance in the Universe, constituting roughly 75% of all baryonic mass. Non-remnant stars are mainly composed of hydrogen in its plasma state. The most common isotope of hydrogen, termed protium (name rarely used, symbol 1H), has one proton and no neutrons.

The universal emergence of atomic hydrogen first occurred during the recombination epoch. At standard temperature and pressure, hydrogen is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, nonmetallic, highly combustible diatomic gas with the molecular formula H2. Since hydrogen readily forms covalent compounds with most non-metallic elements, most of the hydrogen on Earth exists in molecular forms such as in the form of water or organic compounds. Hydrogen plays a particularly important role in acid–base reactions as many acid-base reactions involve the exchange of protons between soluble molecules. In ionic compounds, hydrogen can take the form of a negative charge (i.e., anion) when it is known as a hydride, or as a positively charged (i.e., cation) species denoted by the symbol H+. The hydrogen cation is written as though composed of a bare proton, but in reality, hydrogen cations in ionic compounds are always more complex species than that would suggest. As the only neutral atom for which the Schrödinger equation can be solved analytically, study of the energetics and bonding of the hydrogen atom has played a key role in the development of quantum mechanics.

Hydrogen data

Symbol: H
Atomic mass: 1.008 u ± 0.00001 u
Atomic number: 1
Melting point: -259.2 °C
Boiling point: -252.9 °C
Discovered: 1766
Discovery: Henry Cavendish
Electron configuration: 1s1, per shell: 1
Abundance earth’s crust: 1400 parts per million by weight (0.14%), 2.9% by moles
Abundance solar system: 75% by weight, 93% by moles
Cost, pure: $12 per 100g
Cost, bulk: $? per 100g

According to the U.S. EPA, "a recently documented source of tritium in the environment is [self-illuminating] exit signs that have been illegally disposed of in municipal landfills. Water, which seeps through the landfill, is contaminated with tritium from broken signs and can pass into water ways, carrying the tritium with it."

Tritium is a classic of atomic fall out with a half life of 12.32 years, but since it is a gas it will blow away and disperses in to the air rather than fall out of the sky. Tritium has leaked from 48 of 65 nuclear sites in the US. In one case, leaking water contained 7.5 microcuries (0.28 MBq) of tritium per litre, which is 375 times the EPA limit for drinking water.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission states that in normal operation in 2003, 56 pressurized water reactors released 40,600 curies (1.50 PBq) of tritium (maximum: 2,080; minimum: 0.1; average: 725) and 24 boiling water reactors released 665 curies (24.6 TBq) (maximum: 174; minimum: 0; average: 27.7), in liquid effluents.

The high levels of atmospheric nuclear weapons testing that took place prior to the enactment of the Partial Test Ban Treaty proved to be unexpectedly useful to oceanographers. The high levels of tritium oxide introduced into upper layers of the oceans have been used in the years since then to measure the rate of mixing of the upper layers of the oceans with their lower levels.

Krypton-85[]

KrTube — Image of a krypton filled discharge tube shaped like the element’s atomic symbol. Attribution: Pslawinski.

Krypton is a gaseous chemical element with symbol Kr and atomic number 36. It is a member of group 18 elements.

Krypton has an important role in production and usage of the krypton fluoride laser. The laser has been important in the nuclear fusion energy research community in confinement experiments. The laser has high beam uniformity, short wavelength, and the ability to modify the spot size to track an imploding pellet.

Symbol: Kr
Boiling point: -153.2 °C
Electron configuration: [Ar] 3d104s24p6
Melting point: -157.4 °C
Atomic number: 36
Atomic mass: 83.798 u
Discvoered in: 1898
Discovered by: Morris Travers and William Ramsay
Abundance earth’s crust: 100 parts per trillion by #weight, 30 parts per trillion by moles
Abundance solar system: parts per million by weight, parts per million by moles
Cost, pure: $33 per 100g
Cost, bulk: $ per 100g

Naturally occurring krypton is made of six stable isotopes. In addition, about thirty unstable isotopes and isomers are known. 81Kr, the product of atmospheric reactions, is produced with the other naturally occurring isotopes of krypton. Being radioactive, it has a half-life of 230,000 years. Krypton is highly volatile when it is near surface waters, but 81Kr has been used for dating old (50,000–800,000 years) groundwater.

85Kr is an inert radioactive noble gas with a half-life of 10.76 years. It is produced by the fission of uranium and plutonium, such as in nuclear bomb testing and nuclear reactors. 85Kr is released during the reprocessing of fuel rods from nuclear reactors. Concentrations at the North Pole are 30% higher than at the South Pole due to convective mixing.

It is a classic element of atomic fall out with a half life of ‎10.756 years, but since it is a gas it will blow away and disperses in to the air rather than fall out of the sky.

Iodine-131[]

Iodine is a chemical element with symbol I and atomic number 53. The name is from Greek ἰοειδής ioeidēs, meaning violet or purple, due to the color of iodine vapor.

Symbol: I.
Melting point: 113.7 °C.
Boiling point: 184.3 °C.
Electron configuration: [Kr] 4d105s25p5.
Atomic mass: 126.90447 u.
Atomic number: 53.
Discovery by: Bernard Courtois
Date of discovery: 1811.
Abundance earth’s crust: 450 parts per billion by weight, 73 parts per billion by moles
Abundance solar system: parts per billion by weight, parts per billion by moles
Cost, pure: $8.3 per 100g
Cost, bulk: ?$ per 100g

Iodine and its compounds are primarily used in nutrition, and industrially in the production of acetic acid and certain polymers. Iodine's relatively high atomic number, low toxicity, and ease of attachment to organic compounds have made it a part of many X-ray contrast materials in modern medicine. Iodine has only one stable isotope. Iodine radioisotopes, such as 131I, are also used in medical applications.

Iodine-131, is an important radioisotope of iodine discovered by Glenn Seaborg and John Livingood in 1938 at the University of California, Berkeley. It has a radioactive decay half-life of about eight days.

Radioactive Iodine I-131 (also called Radioiodine I-131) therapy is a treatment for an overactive thyroid, a condition called hyperthyroidism.

It is a classic element of atomic fall out with a half life of 8.0197 days.

Zirconium 97[]

A Zirconium rod. Image taken by User:Dschwen.

Zirconium is a chemical element with symbol Zr and atomic number 40. The name of zirconium is taken from the name of the mineral zircon, the most important source of zirconium.

Zirconium is a lustrous, greyish-white, soft, ductile and malleable metal which is solid at room temperature, though it becomes hard and brittle at lower purities. In powder form, zirconium is highly flammable, but the solid form is far less prone to ignition. Zirconium is highly resistant to corrosion by alkalis, acids, salt water and other agents. However, it will dissolve in hydrochloric and sulfuric acid, especially when fluorine is present. Alloys with zinc become magnetic below 35 K.

Symbol: Zr
Electron configuration: [Kr] 4d25s2
Discovered: 1789
Atomic number: 40
Atomic mass: 91.224 u ± 0.002 u
Melting point 2128 K (1855 °C, 3371 °F)
Boiling point 4650 K (4377 °C, 7911 °F)
Discoverer: Martin Heinrich Klaproth
Abundance earth’s crust: 165 parts per million by weight, 38 parts per million by moles
Abundance solar system: 40 parts per billion by weight, 0.5 parts per billion by moles
Cost, pure: $157 per 100g
Cost, bulk: $16 per 100g

Zirconium has a concentration of about 130 mg/kg within the Earth's crust and about 0.026 μg/L in sea water. It is not found in nature as a native metal, reflecting its intrinsic instability with respect to water. The principal commercial source of zirconium is zircon (ZrSiO4), a silicate mineral, which is found primarily in Australia, Brazil, India, Russia, South Africa and the United States, as well as in smaller deposits around the world. As of 2013, two-thirds of zircon mining occurs in Australia and South Africa. Zircon resources exceed 60 million tonnes worldwide and annual worldwide zirconium production is approximately 900,000 tonnes. Zirconium also occurs in more than 140 other minerals, including the commercially useful ores baddeleyite and kosnarite.

Zr is relatively abundant in S-type stars, and it has been detected in the sun and in meteorites. Lunar rock samples brought back from several Apollo program missions to the moon have a quite high zirconium oxide content relative to terrestrial rocks.

It is a classic element of atomic fall out with a half life of 16.744 hours.

Zirconium 95 has a half life of 64.02 days.

The British Zircon signals intelligence satellite was named after the mineral Zirconium is extracted from, not made out of the mineral it's self.

Antimony 131[]

Antimony 131 has a half-life of 23.03 minuets.

Molybdenum 99[]

Molybdenum 99 has a half-life of 2.7489 days.

Ruthenium 106[]

Ruthenium 106 (106Ru) has a half-life of 373.59 days.

Lanthanum 141[]

lanthanum 141 has a half-life of 3.92 hours.

Tellurium 132[]

Tellurium 132 has a half-life of 3.204.

Tellurium 134 has a half-life of 41.8.

Barium 140[]

Barium 140 has a half-life of 12.752 days.

Cerium 137[]

Cerium2 — 1.5 grams of ultrapure cerium under argon. Original size in cm: 1 x 1.

Cerium is a chemical element with symbol Ce and atomic number 58. It is a soft, silvery, ductile metal which easily oxidizes in air. Cerium was named after the dwarf planet Ceres.

Symbol: Ce
Electron configuration: [Xe] 4f15d16s2
Discovered: 1803
Atomic number: 58
Atomic mass: 140.116 u ± 0.001 u
Boiling point: 3,443 °C
Melting point: 795 °C
Discovery: Martin Heinrich Klaproth, Jöns Jakob Berzelius, Wilhelm Hisinger (1803)
Abundance earth’s crust: 60 parts per million by weight, 8.9 parts per million by moles
Abundance solar system: 4 parts per billion by weight, 30 parts per trillion by moles
Cost, pure: $380 per 100g
Cost, bulk: $1.20 per 100g

Cerium is a chemical element with symbol Ce and atomic number 58. It is a soft, silvery, ductile metal which easily oxidizes in air. Cerium was named after the dwarf planet Ceres (itself named after the Roman goddess of agriculture). Cerium is the most abundant of the rare earth elements, making up about 0.0046% of the Earth's crust by weight. It is found in a number of minerals, the most important being monazite and bastnäsite. Commercial applications of cerium are numerous. They include catalysts, additives to fuel to reduce emissions and to glass and enamels to change their color. Cerium oxide is an important component of glass polishing powders and phosphors used in screens and fluorescent lamps. It is also used in the "flint" (actually ferrocerium) of lighters.

Cerium was named for the asteroid Ceres, which was discovered in 1801 and named after a Roman god of that name.

It is the most abundant of the rare earth metals and is found in minerals including allanite, monazite, cerite, and bastnaesite. There are large deposits found in India, Brazil and the USA, thus giving them much industrial/political leverage on the world. Monazite deposits are located in Australia, Brazil, China, India, Malaysia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and the United States. Norway and Sweden used to be minor and historic sources.

Mischmetal (English: Mixed-metal) is an alloy of about 50% cerium, 25% lanthanum, 15% neodymium and 10%praseodymium, plus trace amounts of other rare-earth metals and iron. It is used as a deoxidizer in various alloys and vacuum tubes. By alloying it in to magnesium, it contributes to both high strength and creep resistance.

Cerium 137 has a half-life of 9 days.

Cerium 144 has a half-life of 284.91 days.

Strangely www.ceriumoptical.com uses the name, but dose not sell the metal since it's an optics firm. As they say "Cerium was founded in 1971, first as a distributor, then as a manufacturer of high-grade optical products." http://www.ceriumoptical.com/ and http://www.ceriumoptical.com/group.aspx

An aluminium greenhouse frame-come aluminium 26 (26Al)?[]

Aluminium-4 — A chunk of aluminium, 2.6 grams, 1 x 2 cm. Author- http://images-of-elements.com/aluminium.php

Symbol: Al
Melting point: 660.3 °C
Electron configuration: [Ne] 3s23p1
Atomic mass: 26.981539 u ± 8 × 10^-7 u
Boiling point: 2,519 °C
Atomic number: 13
Discovered: 1825
Descovered by: Hans Christian Ørsted
Abundance earth’s crust: 8.23 % by weight, 6.32 % by moles
Abundance solar system: 56 ppm by weight, 2.7 ppm by moles
Cost, pure: $15.72 per 100g
Cost, bulk: $0.20 per 100g

Some other things like water and some metals will also become radioactive due to the initial blast ionizing radiation. I chose an aluminium greenhouse frame for an example.

It is used in an extensive range of products from drinks cans, window frames, cooking pans, pace satellites, greenhouse frames, boats and aircraft. A Boeing 747-400 contains 147,000 pounds (66,150 kg) of high-strength aluminum. Only iron is used more widely than aluminum. It has no taste or smell. Aluminium is also slightly toxic which may make cuts and wounds with freshly pollishd and cut aluminium may cause a festering type alergic reation after a few days if it is not cleaned out. Heavy\continued ingestion of it may cause alzheimer’s disease.

Aluminium 26 has a half-life 720,000 years. That is for the time from now to when the people who lived near the Zhoukoudian region of Beijing master the skill of using fire in the early Paleolithic Period (the early stone-age).

Fall out shelters and atomic\nuclear bunkers[]

Kelvedon Hatch emergency broadcast tower, which would have transmitted official announcements after a nuclear attack on the UK. English: Radio Antenna at Kelvedon Hatch (M. Kenyon), ~31 May 2007.

Government would have limped on from places like Kelvedon Hatch Secret Nuclear Bunker and RAF Hack Green. Valuable members of the public, the armed forces and some critical industries would also be protected to a degree, but most would have perished!

No doubt some places would survive and in time form small principalities, duchies and city states.

Also see[]

REAL_PLUTONIUM-0 — REAL PLUTONIUM-0

We're given special access to various plutonium compounds at the National Nuclear Laboratory, in Sellafield. A chance to meet the "Hannibal Lecter of the Periodic Table". With thanks to Mark Sarsfield and Chris Maher... http://www.nnl.co.uk/ In part this video shows how plutonium is extracted from nuclear fuel waste. More chemistry at http://www.periodicvideos.com/ Follow us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/periodicvideos And on Twitter at http://twitter.com/periodicvideos From the School of Chemistry at The University of Nottingham: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/chemistry/index.aspx

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