After 450 more days of irradiation of bismuth with zinc projectiles , Riken produced and identified another 278113 atom in August 2012 . Although electricity prices had soared since the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami , and Riken had ordered the shutdown of the accelerator programs to save money , Morita 's team was permitted to continue with one experiment , and they chose their attempt to confirm their synthesis of element 113 . In this case , a series of six alpha decays was observed , leading to an isotope of mendelevium : This decay chain differed from the previous observations at Riken mainly in the decay mode of 262Db , which was previously observed to undergo spontaneous fission , but in this case instead alpha decayed ; the alpha decay of 262Db to 258Lr is well-known . The team calculated the probability of accidental coincidence to be 10 − 28 , or totally negligible . The resulting 254Md atom then underwent electron capture to 254Fm , which underwent the seventh alpha decay in the chain to the long-lived 250Cf , which has a half-life of around thirteen years
2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami
2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami
Nihonium