Talk:Californium
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Article changed over to new Wikipedia:WikiProject Elements format by mav 08:17, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC). Elementbox converted 11:47, 17 July 2005 by Femto (previous revision was that of 23:40, 10 July 2005).
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[edit] Information Sources
Some of the text in this entry was rewritten from Los Alamos National Laboratory - Californium. Additional text was taken directly from the Elements database 20001107 (via dict.org) and WordNet (r) 1.7 (via dict.org). Data for the table were obtained from the sources listed on the subject page and Wikipedia:WikiProject Elements but were reformatted and converted into SI units.
[edit] Talk
[edit] explosive decay
I've just been related a story from an ex-Soviet nuclear engineer. He said Californium was a problematic element to work with because it exhibits explosive decay; the element decays, splitting off a Helium atom (quite heavy), which given the rate of decay will quickly coat a room in radioactive dust. The attraction of it was it acted as a good calibration element, with a 2.5 year half-life, and it releases many neutrons when an atom splits. How do we add information like that to the article? Josh Parris ✉ 00:24, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
[edit] en masse
The French phrase en masse has the connotation of "all together", that is, a group of people acting as one. It is not used to refer to "mass quantities" of a substance. Tex 20:06, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
[edit] expensive?
This Straight Dope link states that californium-252 is "the most expensive substance in the world". While this sort of rubbishy overstatement pisses me off excessively, does anyone think this should be in the article? If it's correct, that is... although Cecil and his minions usually are. — — riana_dzasta • t • c • e • ER • 22:41, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
in a national geographic article (july '02) it said one miligram of californium 252 cost $68,000 (or $68,000,000 for a gram) Soyseñorsnibbles (talk) 03:28, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
- The author of the Usenet Nuclear Weapons FAQ, Carey Sublette, explains why Cf-252 is so expensive to make in the last-but-one comment of this blog thread [1]:
- High atomic mass transuranics are created by multiple neutron captures, starting (ultimately) with U-238. To make Cf-252 this requires 14 successive captures.
- The problem is: at each stage of this 14-step process the production rate is a fraction of the production rate of the previous product in the chain of captures. When you multiply the starting product production rate by a fraction fourteen times you end up with a very small number. To get significant amounts of product 14 you need very large amounts of starting material. To make grams of Cf-252 you need tons of starting material, plus years of irradiation in a high flux reactor.
- The fuel grade plutonium makes a good starting material because it contains a relatively high concentration of Pu-242, which is already four steps along the production chain.
- Rwendland (talk) 09:50, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Im confused
I know that you cant obtain Californium naturally, but since you can artificially manufacture it, why is the appearance stated as "unknown" ? Forgive my ignorance but surely you can sneak a peek at it while it (temporarily) exists, cant you ?
- As you probably know, most elements are known by their chemical compounds, not their pure elemental appearance. Fluorine, for example, is a good example: it took 74 years of determined effort to finally isolate pure fluorine in 1886. It is perfectly possible for an element's physical appearance to remain "unknown" even if it it synthesized as a compound with oxygen. --Vuo 15:38, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
