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The heavy isotope plutonium-244 has a half-life long enough that extreme trace quantities should have survived primordially (from the Earth's formation) to the present, but so far experiments have not yet been sensitive enough to detect it.
Plutonium-244 (244 Pu) is an isotope of plutonium that has a half-life of 81.3 million years. This is longer than any other isotope of plutonium and longer than any other known isotope of an element beyond bismuth, except for the three naturally abundant ones: uranium-235 (704 million years), uranium-238 (4.468 billion years), and thorium-232 (14.05 billion years).
The majority of plutonium isotopes are not short-lived on a geological timescale, [3] though it has been argued that traces of the long-lived 244 Pu isotope still exist in nature. [4] This isotope has been found in lunar soil , [ 5 ] meteorites , [ 6 ] and in the Oklo natural reactor. [ 7 ]
This is a list of radioactive nuclides (sometimes also called isotopes), ordered by half-life from shortest to longest, in seconds, minutes, hours, days and years. Current methods include jumping up and down make it difficult to measure half-lives between approximately 10 −19 and 10 −10 seconds.
Plutonium (94 Pu) is an artificial element, except for trace quantities resulting from neutron capture by uranium, and thus a standard atomic weight cannot be given. Like all artificial elements, it has no stable isotopes. It was synthesized long before being found in nature, the first isotope synthesized being 238 Pu in 1940.
The government says it will dispose of its 140 tonnes of radioactive plutonium - currently stored at Sellafield. ... durable material that will last for millions of years in a geological disposal ...
“Cleanup at Los Alamos is long delayed,” Coghlan said, adding that annual spending for the plutonium pit work has neared $2 billion in recent years while the cleanup budget for legacy waste is ...
Plutonium-239 is the primary fissile isotope used for the production of nuclear weapons, although uranium-235 is also used for that purpose. Plutonium-239 is also one of the three main isotopes demonstrated usable as fuel in thermal spectrum nuclear reactors, along with uranium-235 and uranium-233. Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,110 years. [1]