Technetium Facts
Technetium Facts
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| Interesting Technetium Facts: |
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| Dmitri Mendeleev predicted an element forty-three in his periodic table nearly seventy years before technetium was discovered. |
| He thought it would have properties very close to manganese, and even named it ekamanganese. |
| Scientists in 1846, 1847, 1877, 1896, 1908, and 1925 all published reports that they had discovered Mendeleev's predicted element 43. |
| All of those reports turned out to be different elements. |
| In 1937, Emilio Segre and Carlo Perrier published the results of their experiment in which they isolated technetium from a sample of molybdenum. |
| Astronomers have since detected technetium's spectral signature in a number of stars. |
| Technetium serves a key role in nuclear medicine. |
| This is because technetium produces beta particles without gamma rays. |
| Technetium is the only element that is artificially produced. |
| This property gives technetium its name, from the Greek for "artificial." |
| Technetium is a radioactive metal that looks a lot like platinum. |
| Technetium has the second largest magnetic penetration depth after niobium. |
| Solid metallic technetium is shiny and has a slow rate of oxidation to tarnish in air. |
| In its powdered form, technetium will burn. |
| Technetium has the lowest atomic number of any solely radioactive element. |
| Technetium has no stable isotopes, as all of its isotopes are radioactive. |
| There is only one other element, promethium, in the first eighty-two to have no stable isotopes. |
| Thirty-six known isotopes of technetium have been created. |
| The most stable of these technetium radioisotopes have half-lives ranging from over 200,000 years to over four million years. |
| Twenty-nine of the radioisotopes have half-lives of under an hour. |
| Only miniscule amounts of technetium occur in the Earth's crust, and these are found in uranium ores. |
| For every kilogram of uranium, there is a predicted one nanogram of technetium. |
| However, large quantities of technetium are produced annually from spent nuclear fuel rods. |
| The long half-life of technetium causes concern for the disposal of this form of nuclear waste. |
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