radioactive isotope

radioactive isotope or radioisotope, natural or artificially created isotope of a chemical element having an unstable nucleus that decays, emitting alpha, beta, or gamma rays until stability is reached. The stable end product is a nonradioactive isotope of another element, i.e., radium-226 decays finally to lead-206. Very careful measurements show that many materials contain traces of radioactive isotopes. For a time it was thought that these materials were all members of the actinide series; however, exacting radiochemical research has demonstrated that certain of the light elements also have naturally occurring isotopes that are radioactive. Since minute traces of radioactive isotopes can be sensitively detected by means of the Geiger counter and other methods, they have various uses in medical therapy, diagnosis, and research. In therapy, they are used to kill or inhibit specific malfunctioning cells. Radioactive phosphorus is used to treat abnormal cell proliferation, e.g., polycythemia (increase in red cells) and leukemia (increase in white cells). Radioactive iodine can be used in the diagnosis of thyroid function and in the treatment of hyperthyroidism. Since the iodine taken into the body concentrates in the thyroid gland, the radioaction can be confined to that organ. In research, radioactive isotopes as tracer agents make it possible to follow the action and reaction of organic and inorganic substances within the body, many of which could not be studied by any other means. They also help to ascertain the effects of radiation on the human organism (see radiation sickness). In industry, radioactive isotopes are used for a number of purposes, including measuring the thickness of metal or plastic sheets by the amount of radiation they can stop, testing for corrosion or wear, and monitoring various processes.

Stable isotopes are chemical isotopes that are not radioactive (to current knowledge). Stable isotopes of the same element have the same chemical characteristics and therefore behave almost identically. The mass differences, due to a difference in the number of neutrons, result in partial separation of the light isotopes from the heavy isotopes during chemical reactions (isotope fractionation). For example, the difference in mass between the two stable isotopes of hydrogen, ¹H (1 proton, no neutron, also known as protium) and ²H (1 proton, 1 neutron, also known as deuterium) is almost 100%. Therefore, a significant fractionation will occur.

Commonly analysed stable isotopes include oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and sulfur. These isotope systems have been under investigation for many years in order to study processes of isotope fractionation in natural systems because they are relatively simple to measure. Recent advances in mass spectrometry (ie. multiple-collector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry) now enable the measurement of heavier stable isotopes, such as iron, copper, zinc, molybdenum, etc.

Stable isotopes have been used in botanical and plant biological investigations for many years, and more and more ecological and biological studies are finding stable isotopes (mostly carbon, nitrogen and oxygen) to be extremely useful. Other workers have used oxygen isotopes to reconstruct historical atmospheric temperatures, making them important tools for climate research.

Most of naturally occurring isotopes are stable; however, a few tens of them are radioactive with very long half-lives. If the half life of a nuclide is comparable to or greater than the Earth's age (4.5 billion years), a significant amount will have survived since the formation of the Solar System, and will contribute to the natural isotopic composition of a chemical element. The lowest half lives of such isotopes are around 700 million years (e.g., ²³⁵U). Many isotopes that are presumed to be stable (i.e. no radioactivity has been observed for them) are predicted to be radioactive with extremely long half-lives (sometimes as high as 10¹⁸ years or more). If the predicted half life falls into an experimentally accessible range, such isotopes have a chance to move from the list of stable nuclides to the radioactive category, once their activity is observed. Good examples are bismuth-209 and tungsten-180 which have been recently (2003) found to be alpha-active.

Most stable isotopes in the earth are believed to have been formed in processes of nucleosynthesis, in generations of stars that preceded the formation of the solar system. However, some stable isotopes show abundance variations in the earth as a result of decay from long-lived radioactive nuclides. These decay-products are termed radiogenic isotopes, in order to distinguish them from the much larger group of 'non-radiogenic' isotopes. They play an important role in radiometric dating and isotope geochemistry.

Research areas

The Island of Stability may reveal a number of stable atoms that are heavier (and with more protons) than lead.

Stable isotope fractionation

There are three types of isotope fractionation:

• equilibrium fractionation
• kinetic fractionation
• mass-independent fractionation

List of stable isotopes

There are 80 known elements which have at least one stable isotope. As of September 2007, there were 250 known stable isotopes. Tin has 10 stable isotopes, more than any other element. Xenon is the only element which has 9 stable isotopes. There is no element with exactly 8 stable isotopes. Only five elements have 7 stable isotopes. Mononuclidic elements are those that have a single isotope (stable or very long-lived) in their natural abundance; there are 27 of these. Every element from hydrogen to lead has at least one stable isotope with the exceptions of technetium and promethium; elements with more than 82 protons only have radioactive isotopes, although they can still occur naturally because their half-lives are of an order of magnitude not much less than that of the time since the death of a nearby star, or because they occur in a decay chain of another radioactive isotope with such a half-life. It wasn't until 2003 that bismuth-209 was shown to be radioactive. All stable isotopes are the ground states of nuclei, excluding tantalum-180m, which is the excited level (the ground state of this nucleus is radioactive), but its decay is extremely strongly forbidden by spin-parity selection rules.

See also

• Table of nuclides
• Isotope geochemistry
• Radionuclide

References