Talk:Cobalt-60/Archive 1

kill one generation of humans ?
What does "kill one generation of humans" mean in this sentence. Would the author mind to add some informations. "[sic] ... is irradiated by neutron radiation from the fission process and transmuted to 60Co, has the power to kill one generation of humans." --Mandor (talk) 15:24, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
 * T1/2 is around 5a. After 30a there is only 1/10 Co60 left -- and the polluted area might be repopulated. Please feel free to remove the sentence or to replace it by a better one. Tubas-en (talk) 17:51, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Another accident - April 2010
Yes, there's been another accident, this time in India. Not notable, merely recent. We also don't report every airplane crash in the article for that type of airplane. -- SEWilco (talk) 22:15, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Dr. Natural
If 60Co isn't found in nature, who first found it in a lab? (I'm guessing it wasn't just lying around. ;p)  TREKphiler   any time you're ready, Uhura  19:33, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I can't seem to find who actually found the isotope in the beginning: it also tends to be great teams of scientists who find elements/isotopes nowadays, so great arguments have been sparked over who made which element (see the element naming controversy for elements 104-109). Since the isotope can be made by irradiation of natural cobalt, my best guess would be that some group decided to put natural cobalt in a nuclear reactor to see what would happen, and they got Co-60 as a result. The person who first came up with the idea for Co-60 therapy was Harold Johns, according to nature.com . Hope this helps! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.196.32.59 (talk) 05:59, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Just looked it up online, it turns out Co-60 was found by Glenn T. Seaborg and John Livingood at Berkeley in the late 1930s. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.197.64.56 (talk) 06:17, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Thx!  TREKphiler   any time you're ready, Uhura  07:25, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Cobalt-60 synthesis
Cobalt-60 is produced artificially by neutron activation of the radio-isotope Cobalt-59 Not a primary source, but it's correct. Selegue (talk) 20:00, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Fe + neutron = Co?
((helpme)) There must be something wrong with the equation in the lead. A neutron cannot change a 59Fe nucleus into a 60Co (omitting the subscripted numbers, as all Fe nuclei have the "26" subscript anyway, and Co nuclei have 27)

The text in the lead says that the "radioisotope" 59Co is the starting point rather than 60Co, but that does not quite add up either. 59Co is stable.

A proton would add up well: 59Fe + p = 60Co = 60Ni + e- + gamma.

I'll try change the Fe to Co, and 26 to 27, and delete the "radio-" prefix. - ¡Ouch! (hurt me / more pain) 16:21, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Renaming proposal

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the debate was move. Andrewa 03:24, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Requested move
Move Cobalt-60 (isotope) → Cobalt-60 (now a dab page). The isotope is clearly a primary topic. The derived band and comic names don't come close to impose equal disambiguation. Cobalt-60 (with dash) follows naming conventions of WikiProject Isotopes. There is no pagename collision with the band Cobalt 60 (without dash). Femto 14:12, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Voting

 * Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your vote with ~ 


 * Support, obviously. Femto 14:12, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Support, everything else is named for this one anyway. Kusma (討論) 14:57, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Discussion

 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The article says the half-life is 5.27 years, but the diagram says it's 5.26. Inconsistent, yes? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.59.243.42 (talk) 02:10, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

The specific activity of an isotope is 1/(atomic mass) * avogadro's number * the radioactive decay constant. For Co-60, this is approximately 1100 Ci/g. The quote without reference of ~50 Ci/g is wrong by over a factor of 20.

On the note of half-life. The half-life from KAERI, http://atom.kaeri.re.kr/ton/, is 1925.1 days. If calculated by 366 day year (leap year) the half-life is 5.26 yrs, while calculated by standard 365 days the half-life is 5.27 yrs. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ssmeelink (talk • contribs) 18:45, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't know what kind of math you've done in the past but when performing these kinds of calculations you don't assume leap year or not, you use 365.25 days/year. This is a basic premise in radiation physics. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.249.137.127 (talk) 01:32, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Use in RTGs
If Co-60 is used in RTGs, I am certainly unaware of it, and it seems very unlikely. Manufacturers of RTGs specifically avoid radioisotopes that dissipate most of their decay energy via gamma-ray emission, particularly emission of high-energy gammas -- of which Co-60 is an excellent example. Anybody got a reference for this? If it can't be documented, I'm going to remove that throwaway mention. -- Bill-on-the-Hill (talk) 20:40, 25 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Agreed. I can find no evidence of Co-60 ever having been used in an RTG. Removing it. Kolbasz (talk) 16:40, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

lifetime and decay energy
"The short lifetime contributes further to the high decay energy." Is anyone knowledgeable responsible for overseeing this page?50.147.26.108 (talk) 23:28, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Decay Numbers
Could somebody please check the numbers reported regarding decay?

When I look at the nuclear data in the reference (currently ref [5]), I see 0.022% for the chance of beta decay to the middle state. The text reports a chance of 0.0022%, a factor of 10 smaller. And the label on the graph reports 0.12%, which is a factor of 5.45 high. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.101.124.26 (talk) 19:58, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

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Reference needed for reason for lack of naturally occurring Co-60
On April 10, 2012, an anonymous editor made two edits saying in the comments that Co-60's short half-life is not the reason it cannot be found naturally. It is, of course, common sense that none of the Co-60 generated by stellar nucleosynthesis can be found on earth because it all decayed away within a few centuries of the earth's formation, but common sense is not a reference.

Before I enter an edit war with this extremely opinionated editor, I'd like to be armed with a reference. I'll check my elementary astrophysics textbooks for something applicable. If anyone else has a reference on hand already, please let me know. Thanks. Rwflammang (talk) 00:52, 11 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Those edits were by me. It's not just common sense, it's physics and grammar. You will not find a reference supporting the verbage the way it was prior to my changes. Talk to any physicist, they will reassure you that my edit was for the best. If you want to add a tidbit in there about how it was earth once upon a time then do that and include a ref... but it shouldn't be part of the opening line about this isotope and it shouldn't be repeated again later in the article. Add it in the "occurrence" section, but again...be sure to include a solid reference and take care with your grammar, those are key to some of my favorite articles on this site so I'd like to protect that.


 * Well then, let's find some better verbage. (Not that the old verbage violated common sense or physics or even grammar.) As the article primordial nuclide explains quite handily, if Co-60 had a long enough half life, then some of it would have survived un-transmuted to this day. Surely some Co-60 is made cosmogenically, but apparently not at a fast enough rate to overcome its inherent radioactivity. Since the radioactivity of a nuclide is inversely proportional to its half life, then it makes sense to say that cosmogenic Co-60 is not found in nature due to its short half-life. You get the point.


 * Your edit comments stated that, Previously stated that "due to half-life not found in nature" this is absolutely incorrect. It's not found in nature because it's synthetic, half life and being found in nature have no relation to one another, and,  Same reason as previous edit, citing "short half life" as the reason for no natural occurrence is nonsensical and absolutely incorrect. Perhaps you can explain how it is possible that either of these edit comments is true. Talk to any physicist ([silly insult against high school teachers omitted]); he will reassure you that it can't be. Rwflammang (talk) 01:02, 24 April 2012 (UTC)


 * The "half-life not found in nature" part is bad grammar.
 * OTOH, "half life and being found in nature have no relation to one another" isn't even remotely true. There are factors other than half-life, e.g. if it's in the decay chain of some abundant isotope (so that it is generated on Earth), so one must be careful about the wording as "not found in nature". I propose "nothing of the primordial nuclide has survived" instead, to make clearer that we are talking about the amount generated by the supernova causing the solar system to form. - ¡Ouch! (hurt me / more pain) 09:11, 10 May 2012 (UTC)


 * The bad grammar is in the edit comment; it was not in the original text. Rwflammang (talk) 11:11, 10 May 2012 (UTC)


 * All the arguing is for not. Cobalt-60 is not strictly a synthetic element.  It is found (very rarely) in nature as the decay daughter of Fe-60. Fe-60 has a half life of a couple million years but is still found because of a (relatively) close supernova (relatively) recently.  As Co-60 has a half life of just over 5 years, it isn't around long, but there are natural Co60 atoms to be found.

Look in the 'Iron Isotopes' article.

2600:8807:8787:7700:1C3A:A244:3FCD:A9D9 (talk) 23:36, 20 December 2016 (UTC)BGriffin

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Use in RTGs (again)
In the print edition of The Economist dated 2022-02-05, article "Faster, higher, stronger" in the "Science & Technology section, I read that some of the proposals for nuclear systems for satellite propulsion or onboard power submitted to the Pentagon's Defense Innovation Unit are for RTGs; it mentions some drawbacks with for this purpose and continues:
 * The DIU is therefore looking for alternatives with a shorter half-life and a "much higher thermal power density", says [Captain Ryan Weed of the USAF]., with a half-life of 5.3 years is a promising alternative.

Until [this edit], prompted by Talk:Cobalt-60/Archive_1, the article used to say: might be an efficient heater for a radioisotope thermoelectric generator. However, in contrast to the commonly-used plutonium-238, its power is nearly exhausted after 10 years. It is also more difficult to absorb the γ-ray power of than the power of α-particles emitted by.

I know nothing about this field, but it may now be appropriate to restore that or something similar. Hv (talk) 13:19, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Missing cross reference
Should not this article at least reference the Wikipedia article entitled "Ciudad Juárez cobalt-60 contamination incident?" Jmarsh48 (talk) 19:03, 6 March 2022 (UTC)