The remotely operated, plastic-bag passout sealer is used in removing isotopic fractions for storage in the rear or for removing radioactive waste for placement in the waste storage containers. The water-shielded cave facility is used in processing irradiated slugs for recovery of americium, curium, berkelium, californium, einsteinium, and fermium. With some eluants interesting reversals of elution positions are observed in the region Bk-Cf-99-100, indicating complex ion formation involving unusual factors.īAG PASSOUT SEALER FOR WATER-SHIELDED CAVE FACILITY (Engineering Materials) The new elements also exist partially as anions in concentrated hydrochloric acid, as do earlier actinide elements, and they may be partially separated from each other by means of ion exchange resins. The results of experiments involving cation exchange resins with very concentrated hydrochloric acid eluant show that the new elements, like the earlier actinides, are more strongly complexed than the lanthanides. The relative spacings of the elution peaks of the new elements in some separations with ion exchange resin columns are the same as the relative spacings of the homologous lanthanide elements. In normal aqueous media only the III state of element 100 appears to exist. Attempts to produce an oxidation state greater than III of element 99 have been unsuccessful. The new elements exhibit the properties expected for the tenth and eleventh actinide elements. R.Ī description of some of the chemical properties and of the methods used in the separations of elements 99 and 100 are given. Additional details and discussions about the discovery of this element and the scientists involved are given in several references (Thompson et al., 1954 Ghiorso et al., 1955 Fields et al., 1956 Hyde et al., 1964 Seaborg and Loveland, 1990).Ĭhemical Properties of Elements 99 and 100 [ Einsteinium and Fermium The first element was named in honor of Albert Einstein, and assigned the symbol, E (later changed to the current symbol, Es). From these investigations came the discovery and identification of einsteinium and fermium. Government laboratories separated and analyzed extensively the debris samplings in the following weeks. Nuclei were formed with usually high neutron/proton ratios (very ‘heavy' uranium isotopes), which then rapidly beta-decayed into new, transuranium isotopes through element 100. The uranium present in this device was subjected to a very intense neutron flux (integrated fluence of about 1024neutrons) in an extremely short time frame (few nanoseconds), which allowed a large number of multiple neutron captures with a minimal degree of decay of the products formed. The discovery of einsteinium, element 99, came about during the analyses of nuclear products produced in and then recovered from test debris following a thermonuclear explosion (weapon test device, ‘Mike', November 1952) at Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.