Fission products (by element)

Krypton 83-86

Krypton-85 is formed by the fission process with a fission yield of about 0.3%. Only 20% of the fission products of mass 85 become ⁸⁵Kr itself; the rest passes through a short-lived nuclear isomer and then to stable ⁸⁵Rb. During the fuel dissolution this radioactive xenon are released.

Increase of fission gases above a certain limit can lead to fuel pin swelling and even puncture, so that fission gas measurement after discharging the fuel from reactor is most important to make burn-up calculations, to study the nature of fuel inside the reactor, behaviour with pin materials, for effective utilisation of fuel and also reactor safety.

Strontium 88-90

While the atom yield of radiotherapy of bone tumors. This tends to be used in palliative care to reduce the pain due to secondary tumors in the bones.

⁹⁰Sr has a fission yield of about 1% and a strontium-90 contamination around Chernobyl has been published by the IAEA. [1]

Yttrium 89

The only stable yttrium isotope, ⁸⁹Y, will be found with yield somewhat less than 1% in a fission product mixture which has been allowed to age for months or years, as the other isotopes have half-lives of 106.6 days or less.

⁹⁰Sr decays into ⁹⁰Y which is a beta emitter with a half life of 2.67 days. ⁹⁰Y is sometimes used for medical purposes and can be obtained either by the technetium cow.

Zirconium 90-96

A significant amount of molybdenum), while almost 10% of the fission products mixture after years of decay is five stable or extremely longlived isotopes of zirconium, and ⁹³Zr with a halflife of 1.53 million years.

In emulsion which is the third phase.

Molybdenum 95, 97, 98, 100

The fission product mixture contains significant amounts of molybdenum.

Technetium 99

The ⁹⁹Tc isotope of fission products page for details.

Ruthenium 101-106

Plenty of both stable osmium tetroxide, the ruthenium compound is a stronger oxidant which enables it to form deposits by reacting with other substances. In this way the ruthenium in a reprocessing plant is very mobile and can be found in odd places. Also at Chernobyl during the fire the ruthenium became volatile and behaved differently to many of the other metallic fission products. Some of the particles which were emitted by the fire were very rich in ruthenium.

In addition the ruthenium in PUREX raffinate forms a large number of rhodium tends to be long, hence it can take a long time for a ruthenium or rhodium compound to react.

It has been suggested that the ruthenium and palladium in PUREX raffinate should be used as a source of the metals [2][3].

Rhodium 103

While less rhodium than ruthenium and palladium is formed (around 3.6% yield), the mixture of fission products still contains a significant amount of this metal. Due to the high prices of ruthenium, catalysts in industrial plants such as petrochemical plants.

Potential Applications of Fission Platinoids in Industry, Zdenek Kolarik, Platinum Metals Review, 2005, 49, April (2).[4]

A dire example of people being exposed to radiation from contaminated jewellery occurred in the USA where it is thought that the recycled into jewellery. The gold did contain radioactive decay products of ²²²Rn. Further details can be found at [5] and [6].

Palladium 105-110

A great deal of third phase.

The fission palladium can separate during the process in which the alloy with the fission tellurium. This alloy can separate from the glass.

Tellurium 125, 128, 130

Tellurium-132 and its daughter ¹³²I are important in the first few days after a criticality. It was responsible for a large fraction of the dose inflicted on workers at Chernobyl in the first week.

The isobar forming ¹³²Te/¹³²I is

antimony-132 (half life 2.8 minutes) decaying to tellurium-132 (half life 3.2 days) decaying to iodine-132 (half life 2.3 hours) which decays to stable xenon-132.

Iodine 129, 131

Several gamma rays are likely to be able to escape from the thyroid to irradiate other parts of the body.

Lots of ¹³¹I was released during an experiment named the 'Green run'[7][8]. The 'green run' was an experiment in which fuel which had only been allowed to cool for a short time after irradiation was reprocessed in a plant which had no iodine scrubber in operation.

Xenon 131-136

In reactor fuel the fission beta particle decay of the corresponding xenon isotopes, this causes the cesium to become physically separated from the bulk of the uranium oxide fuel.

Because ¹³⁵Xe is a potent nuclear fuel; these boron loaded fuels are intended to give the same reactivity throughout the time it is in the reactor core.

It is thought that xenon poisoning was one of the factors which lead to the power surge which damaged the Chernobyl reactor core.

Cesium 133, 134, 135, 137

A lot of fission product page for further details of cesium as a troublesome isotope in fall-out and nuclear wastes. This element is a key element which allows the fission products from a bomb to be distinguished from power reactor fission products.

A map of cesium-137 in the area around Chernobyl has been published by the IAEA.[9]

Barium 138, 139

A lot of Otto Hahn and Strassmann.

Lanthanides (lanthanum 139, cerium 140-144, neodymium 142-146, 148, 150, promethium-147, and samarium 149, 151, 152, 154)

A great deal of the lighter natural nuclear fission reactor operated millions of years ago the isotopic mixture of neodymium is not the same as 'normal' neodymium, it has an isotope pattern very similar to the neodymium formed by fission.

In the aftermath of criticality accidents the level of ¹⁴⁰La is often used to determine the fission yield (in terms of the number of nuclei which underwent fission).