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Plutonium-241 is a beta emitter with a half-life of 14.3 years, corresponding to a decay of about 5% of 241 Pu nuclei over a one-year period. This decay has a Q -value of 20.78 ± 0.17 keV and a mean of 5.227 ± 0.043 keV , and does not emit gamma rays . [ 1 ]
Plutonium-242 is not fissile, nor very fertile (requiring 3 more neutron captures to become fissile); and has a low neutron capture cross section, and a longer half-life than any of the lighter isotopes. Plutonium-244 is the most stable isotope of plutonium, with a half-life of about 80 million years. It is not significantly produced in nuclear ...
No fission products have a half-life ... Plutonium and uranium in grades normally used in nuclear weapons are the most ... plutonium-241: 14.3: 12: 10.5 [13 ...
The heavy isotope plutonium-244 has a half-life long enough that ... isotopes (95 protons). Plutonium-241 is the ... the nucleus emits one or two free neutrons ...
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 make it difficult to measure half-lives between approximately 10 −19 and 10 −10 seconds.
Half-life (y) Critical mass (kg) Diameter (cm) ... plutonium-241: 14.3: 12: 10.5 [9 ... more than one free neutron of the desired energy level in order to sustain a ...
In particular, plutonium-241 decays to americium-241 with a 14-year half-life. Because americium-241 is a gamma ray emitter, [citation needed] its presence is a potential occupational health hazard. It is possible, however, to remove the americium from the plutonium by a chemical separation process.
This isotope also has one meta state, 241m Am, with an excitation energy of 2.2 MeV (0.35 pJ) and a half-life of 1.23 μs. The presence of 241 Am in plutonium is determined by the original concentration of plutonium-241 and the sample age. Because of the low penetration of alpha radiation, americium-241 only poses a health risk when ingested or ...