Talk:Curium

Untitled
Article changed over to new WikiProject Elements format by mav 04:07, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC). Elementbox converted 11:36, 17 July 2005 by Femto (previous revision was that of 13:45, 9 July 2005). 9 July 2005

Information Sources
Some of the text in this entry was rewritten from Los Alamos National Laboratory - Curium. 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 WikiProject Elements but were reformatted and converted into SI units.

Curium-247 - ideal small reactor/nuke power source?
It said to have "bare sphere" critical mass of 7 kg (Pu-239 is 10 kg (or 16 kg - Wikipedia disagees with itself on this)), yet half-life is 15 million years. Should it be mentioned? Where mass and W/kg are very critical (e.g. nuclear propulsion in space), it may make it rather useful, I think. (closest contenders: Np-236: 7 kg, 154000 years; californium-249, californium-251: 5-6 kg, <1000 years).

Pu239 is warm as small sheres and hot with larger due to its high Spontaneous Fission rate. See Demon Core, named for its dead, a 14 Kg Plutonium sphere. Plutonium easily compresses with pressure. Bombs use explosives around the Plutonium pit to compress the Plutonium to critical density. So the easier to use 10 Kg Plutonium pit is reasonable for a bomb. So 16 Kg seems about right. However do look up the inconvenience a 14Kg pit caused. TaylorLeem (talk) 21:36, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Safety???
The entire article seems biased towards short lived light Curium isotopes (242, 243) and seems to ignore the much longer lived heavier isotopes like 247, 248 half lives to 10^7 years. TaylorLeem (talk) 21:13, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure it is that unbalanced. Of course, Curium is all about long half-lives. Could you be more specific, for example why the short-lived ones are less important -- while in RL/physics they are relevant (in my opinion). Also, could you clarify the section title 'Safety???'. -DePiep (talk) 21:57, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles on nuclear waste note that the most dangerous long term radioactive wastes are long life transuranics accumulating in original waste because non-fertile/non-fissile. TaylorLeem (talk) 01:51, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Because of all the neutron captures needed to get up that high competing against fission, it's rather the light isotopes that dominate in practice. Double sharp (talk) 09:11, 4 January 2024 (UTC)