Title: Plutonium, Chemical Element - water, uses, elements, metal, number, name, symbol, property
Headings: PLUTONIUM
PLUTONIUM
Overview
SYMBOL
Pu
ATOMIC NUMBER
94
ATOMIC MASS
244.0642
Discovery and naming
Physical properties
Chemical properties
Occurrence in nature
Isotopes
Extraction
Uses
Using fuel to make fuel
Compounds
Health effects
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User Contributions:
Karthik
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Content: In 376,300 years (one half life),  only half of a sample prepared today would still be plutonium-242. The  rest would have broken down into a new isotope. Extraction
Plutonium is extracted from natural sources only rarely and only for the  purposes of research. Uses
The most important uses of plutonium depend on two of its properties. First, the radiation given off by plutonium occurs as heat. In fact,  plutonium gives off so much heat that the metal feels warm when it is  touched. If a large piece of plutonium is placed into water, the heat  released can cause the water to boil. Plutonium provides electrical power on space probes and space vehicles. This property makes plutonium a good choice for certain thermoelectric  generator applications. A thermoelectric generator is a device that  converts heat into electricity.