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"Century of the Atom." 1971. Produced by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. The Search for Element 94 (1:27)

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Glen Seaborg: We were searching for element 94 and on December 14th, 1940, we made our initial bombardment of uranium oxide plastered onto a grooved copper plate using the 60-inch cyclotron at Berkeley. Our plan was to search for an isotope of element 94 with a relatively short half-life, one that would produce a more rapid emission of alpha particles. We used a 16 MeV beam of deuterons from the cyclotron, hoping to find a detectable source of alpha particles to prove the existence of element 94. We put the material through a chemical procedure that would isolate element 93, hoping this would decay to element 94. We did find radioactivity that decayed to an isotope that emitted alpha particles, apparently an isotope of element 94. Ultimately the isolation of element 94 required the chemical separation of the new element from all others, and Arthur Wahl achieved that goal in February 1941. In March, Kennedy, Wahl, and myself, working with Emilio Segre, created and identified the fissionable isotope Plutonium-239. It soon became evident that this highly fissionable element, in addition to its uses as a nuclear explosive and a nuclear fuel source, would also be valuable in future trans-uranium research.

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Date: 1971
Genre: sound
ID: energy1167
Copyright: More Information

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