Since we seem to be on an elemental kick here, I’ve got a question.
What’s the point with “creating” elements? What’s the cost-effectiveness of this? What does your average element run nowadays?
The point is simply a “because we can” kinda thing…the created elements usually decay pretty quick, so you don’t actually get to complete the stuff. And they’re REALLY expensive.
Because you never know what value they might have until you create them. The knowledge of how to do it alone could be very valuable.
Most of the man-made elements are transuranic, i.e., heavier than uranium. It’s understandable that these elements are less stable (shorter half-life), and thus why there’s less of them.
But there are two lighter elements that also have short half-lives and are so rare that no natural levels of them have been found.
Technetium was made by bombarding molybdenum with deuterons (heavy hydrogen nuclii). One site (that I can’t reach right now for some reason) states that a somewhat stable isotope of technetium can be made that has a 1/2-life of a couple dozen years. It has been used in long-range spacecraft because it’s relatively fast decay makes it a good power source, and two dozen years is still a good useful life for a space probe.
Promethium is found mainly in fission products of uranium, plutonium, and thorium. I know it probably has some use, but once again, I can’t contact the site.
Any idea what the most expensive element is?
Current theories indicate there may be an “island of stability” for elements with atomic numbers higher (but not much higher) than those that have been created artificially already. The thinking is that those elements may be a little more stable and may actually exist long enough to be useful, somehow.
As for the most expensive element, you’ll have to clarify a little, I think. Do you mean the one that costs the most to buy, or the one that costs the most to make? Most of the man-made elements were made in minute quantities and have very short half-lives. They cost a lot to manufacture but you can’t sell them because they’re gone too quickly. So they aren’t for sale at any price. They are all, of course, radioactive so your average citizen couldn’t purchase them anyway.
It would have to be one of the man-made elements. It costs thousands of dollars to make just a few atoms in a cyclotron. A pound of, say, Einsteinium, would probably cost billions of dollars.
Cecil knows all.
The most expensive element is apparently californium-252 at $350 billion a pound.
So does anyone know who actually buys Cf_252, and what it’s used for? I mean, if it has a market price, it has a market, right?
–
MrDeath
“Bart, shut up! Lisa, drink the water!”
It seems to me that these exotic elements were used to ‘mark’ mines and pipelines. How, exactly, I’m not sure.
Try this site for a lot of good info:
The most useful artificial element may be americium which is used in smoke detectors. About 2 Kg. / year is manufactured for this purpose.
Well, californium’s critical mass is low enough that one could make a nuclear warhead the size of a bullet if one wanted…
The most expensive elements, considering both manufacturing price and maintenance price, would likely belong in the anti-particle family. They are simply orders of magnitude harder to generate in comparison to their non-anti counterparts… hrm… there must be a better for that. Anyway, scientists are already jumping up and down for getting one anti-hydrogen atom (last I recall, even that result is being disputed). You can imagine yourself what a single anti, oh, Californium atom would do to them.
As for making nuclear warheads the size of a bullet… just 23 grams of anti-matter can cause an explosion equivalent to 1 megaton of TNT (Little Boy and Fat Man were 15 and 21 kilotons respectively), and you don’t need a scientist to teach you how to set it off…
Nobody has mentioned plutonium yet. Plutonium is largely “bred” from uranium.
It could turn out to be the most useful element in human history, as it has the potential to quickly and irrevocably end the human overpopulation problem. And close the human history books forever.
Also, the unstable isotope of Technetium, 99m Tc (sorry, superscript ignorant), which decays from 99 Mo, is the most widely used isotope in nuclear medicine, my field. Because of it’s short half life (~6 hours) and excellent gamma energy (140 KeV), it makes a perfect isotope for imaging, decreasing patient’s radiation doses significantly from some of the other isotopes we used to use, as well as improving image quality.
Natural levels of Tc and Pm CAN be found. Just not on Earth and only in stellar spectrums. They do form naturally, they just don’t stick around because all of their isotopes decay rapidly.
Call me cynical, but I think the real motivation for creating new elements is that the first person to make it gets to name it.
I’ve already chosen a name for mine: “Chucklebuttium”
It may have once cost that much. But according to the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Periodic Table of the Elements, “[sup]252[/sup]Cf is now being offered for sale by the O.R.N.L. at a cost of $10/mg.”
Just an update:
Technetium: The element is a remarkable corrosion inhibitor for steel. The metal is an excellent superconductor at 11K and below.
Promethium: The element has applications as a beta source for thickness gages, and it can be absorbed by a phosphor to produce light. Light produced in this manner can be used for signs or signals that require dependable operation; it can be used as a nuclear-powered battery by capturing light in photocells which convert it into electric current. Such a battery, using 147Pm, would have a useful life of about 5 years. Promethium shows promise as a portable X-ray source, and it may become useful as a heat source to provide auxiliary power for space probes and satellites. More than 30 promethium compounds have been prepared. Most are colored.
Well, they’ve made more than one anti-hydrogen atom, but not a whole lot more. Do a search for anti-hydrogen and find more than you want to know about it.
But anti-hydrogen is easy, at least compared to say, anti-deuterium. After all, anti-protons and anti-electrons (positrons) are produced in goodly quantities in particle accelerators. But where could we get an anti-deuteron (anti-proton and anti-neutron combined into a particle)?