Title: Plutonium  - Element information, properties and uses | Periodic Table
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Plutonium
Pu
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Content: It is extremely toxic due to its radioactivity. Natural abundance
The greatest source of plutonium is the irradiation of uranium in nuclear reactors. This produces the isotope plutonium-239, which has a half-life of 24,400 years. Plutonium metal is made by reducing plutonium tetrafluoride with calcium. Help text not available for this section currently
History
History
Elements and Periodic Table History
Plutonium was first made in December 1940 at Berkeley, California, by Glenn Seaborg, Arthur Wahl, Joseph Kennedy, and Edwin McMillan. They produced it by bombarding uranium-238 with deuterium nuclei (alpha particles). This first produced neptunium-238 with a half-life of two days, and this decayed by beta emission to form element 94 (plutonium). Within a couple of months element 94 had been conclusively identified and its basic chemistry shown to be like that of uranium. To begin with, the amounts of plutonium produced were invisible to the eye, but by August 1942 there was enough to see and weigh, albeit only 3 millionths of a gram. However, by 1945 the Americans had several kilograms, and enough plutonium to make three atomic bombs, one of which exploded over Nagasaki in August 1945.