Title: It's Elemental - The Element Plutonium
Headings: It's Elemental
It's Elemental
The Element Plutonium

Content: Plutonium's most stable isotope, plutonium-244, has a half-life of about 82,000,000 years. It decays into uranium -240 through alpha decay. Plutonium-244 will also decay through spontaneous fission. Only two of plutonium's isotopes, plutonium-238 and plutonium-239, have found uses outside of basic research. Plutonium-238 is used in radioisotope thermoelectric generators to provide electricity for space probes that venture too far from the sun to use solar power, such as the Cassini and Galileo probes. Plutonium-239 will undergo a fission chain reaction if enough of it is concentrated in one place, so it is used at the heart of modern day nuclear weapons and in some nuclear reactors. Estimated Crustal Abundance: Not Applicable
Estimated Oceanic Abundance: Not Applicable
Number of Stable Isotopes: 0 ( View all isotope data)
Ionization Energy: